Featured Do These Leaves Have a Symbolic Meaning?

Hello all,

As I am moving, a few things are going into storage or being sold. My mother asked to see anything I wasn’t sure about, and flagged this mug.

I purchased it from a charity shop to hold the pens on my desk and never gave it a second thought, but - as forget-me-nots have symbolic meaning - I now wonder: do the leaves below it also? Of course plants and herbs go in and out of fashion, and the meaning changes too, so I hoped someone here might recognise the style and be able to identify where/when it was made, which might explain the motif. My mother thinks that the blue flowers are for remembering a lost loved one, and I think they are more romantically aimed at the living. Does the second set of leaves decide it?

Edit: cannot seem to get rid of the last image. Hmm. Never mind, you can ignore it as necessary.

 

have a safe move !!!!

 

Thanks K!

 

My mother thinks it’s Coriander... but the only meaning I could find for that was “venerie”

 

It's sweet. No size given, but considering your use for it, it's likely as already suggested, a shaving mug. Sometimes a flower is just a decorative devise, but if it was intended to impart meaning, a forget-me-not was usually a reminder to not forget the giver (it's actually pretty common on shaving mugs since they were a common gift for men from their ladies or family) - the border of acanthus is one of the endless variations on the motif, which dates back to ancient times.

Was the base broken off and glued back on?

~Cheryl

 

So the vote is for acanthus! Well if I sell it (unlikely given my mother’s interest) I’ll pop that in the description, though a shame it’s not something with more of a tradition behind it I googled scuttles, and there are a few with forget-me-nots and oak leaves indicated remembrance and longevity, but this is perhaps too cheaply made for the same attention to design. There is a sizeable crack at the base and plenty of chips, but the crack doesn’t go all the way around luckily, so the base has never come away

 

Does anybody else think this could be majolica?

 

I think it likely is, though it could be copied from an older item? My minimal reading-up suggests that majolica is still made today but the copies are not executed so well and aren’t considered “real”. Either way, I know Victorians loved putting symbolism into commercial items so thought it was worth the ask, in case anyone recognised it as a copy

 

Look up the cilantro plant...that’s where they get the coriander (& seeds) from. I think I agree with your mother.

 

It very much resembles coriander to me too, but the only “meaning” I could find for coriander is “lust” because it was considered an aphrodisiac! I don’t have any books on flower symbolism so I thought I’d ask here, as so many later Victorian objects use flowers in this way