The Dance of the Butterfly: Beautiful Butterfly Gifts

(Bébé Daniels, 1920s)

We have the absolute best butterfly jewelry at the moment. Here are a select few pretties. 

Enjoy.

(Scarab Brooch)

(c.1910 Butterfly Enamel Ring)

(Tortoise Butterfly earrings)

Beautiful Butterfly Holiday Gifts.

Summer: A Time for Travel

Summer is always a fun time in Isadora’s.  Thousands of people visit the historic Pike Place Market each May through September, many of them taking a moment, a half an hour or even a half a day to pop into our store, and enjoy our collection. 

Seattle Pike Place Market

We so enjoy hearing each individual’s story as pass through our store and lives, enriching us with a greater sense of the people of this world we live in.  And sometimes those of us who work in the store get a chance to take a trip ourselves.

Tourism is not a new thing.  On my very favorite movies and novels (It is so rare I like both) is “A Room with a View” by E.M. Forster where the young Lucy Honeychurch is transformed by a trip to Italy during the early 20^th century.

Mt. Vesuvius Ash Cameo Brooch

I feel, the good vacations we eagerly anticipate, thoroughly enjoy, and hold as a memory for years to come.  The great vacations transform us.  And so I ask myself, how do we hold those memories after we leave, retain the beauty and the emotional sustenance they provide having returned to our normal life once again? 

Egyptian Revival Bracelet

I remember a quote from the movie Rebecca (another book/movie although I confess I never made it to the book after being captivated by Laurence Olivier’s Maxim de Winters).  Joan Fontaine’s character says, “You know, I , I wish there could be an invention . . . that bottled up the memory like perfume.  And it never faded, never got stale.  That whenever I wanted to, I could uncork the bottle and live the memory all over again.”

1920's Butterfly Wing Necklace

And I suppose one can’t truly live a memory again, but like Joan Fontaine’s imagined bottle, I believe an object can be the keeper for a memory.  You look at it and remember the smell of your vacation, the excitement, the transcendent moments.  And for me jewelry has always been a perfect memory holder.  It is something personal, so personal it is worn on your person and whether it is a ring on your finger or a locket on your neck you hold the memories close when you put that piece of jewelry on.

Vintage Italian Themed Charm Bracelet

And just as I love to look at my souvenir’s brought back from different parts of the world, I also like to look at what others chose to collect on trips aboard.  Particularly the tourists of yester year-whether it is an Italian cameo purchased on a Victorian lady’s grand tour, a piece of Egyptian revival enamel jewelry inspired by the opening of King Tut’s tomb, a British butterfly wing pendant sold at the British Empire Exhibition of 1924 or a sweet 50’s silver charm bracelet collected by a young girl as she traveled the world.  

Butterflies: Love’s Beauty

(Circa 1890. Sterling, seed pearl and chrysoberyl Victorian brooch.)

A friend enraptured with a new ring on her much bejeweled finger – a bold Victorian piece shaped like a butterfly queried me about the symbolism of butterflies in the Victorian era. I was in a rush and I said something glib about metamorphosis: caterpillars to butterflies: A creature both beautiful and fleeting. But the question sat with me. I remembered a Persian play I’d been extremely moved by 7 or 8 years ago in which a butterfly came to symbolize humanity and its struggle. I see a number of plays but I remember this play’s imagery so well for its aching beauty. And so two weeks later I return to the topic of butterflies and their symbolism having reflected and most importantly researched.

(Circa 1920. This beautiful sterling silver pendant frames a stunning butterfly wing.)

The butterfly as symbol re-occurs in many cultures, as do the ideas it symbolizes, primarily the soul, love and rebirth. In the tales of ancient Greeks we learn that cupid turned psyche into a butterfly and thus the word for butterfly is “psyche”: The psyche being soul and mind. The Romans also saw the butterfly as symbolically attached to the soul but it’s meaning grows even richer, for to the Romans the soul is the place where love originates from.

Traveling to China I learn that in Chinese culture two butterflies flying together became a symbol for love and in Japanese culture we return again to the soul. A butterfly is seen to be the personification of the soul: living, dying or dead. And yet again the intertwining of the soul and love: A beautiful Japanese superstition is the belief that if you find a butterfly in your guestroom perched behind a bamboo screen, the person you love most in the world is coming to see you.

(Circa 1880. Beautiful Victorian Locket.)

And so I finally arrive at the Victorian era from whence it all began. A very Christian era when it comes to European jewelry the butterfly has a very Christian meaning. The butterfly this time symbolizes Christ’s rebirth for as the butterfly journeys through three stages—caterpillar, chrysalis and butterfly so Christ experienced life, death and resurrection. (On an interesting and almost connected side note, during the Victorian era flies and moths symbolized the heart and soul hovering dangerously close to love’s flame.) And my last meaning in my obsessive quest for the heart of the butterflies meaning, art nouveau jewelers believe, simply put, butterflies were a metaphor for love’s beauty.

I now realize the butterfly is as beautifully complex symbolically as it is visually. Pick your own meaning.