Roses have always been my favorite flower. There’s something complete about them—layered, composed, ornamental yet dangerous. But irises, I’ve realized, are my second. And they hold a different kind of power. Their petals don’t spiral inward but rather burst outward, falling in graceful arcs, like silk just released. Their colors—those radiant purples, sunny yellows, and quiet whites—are the kind of colors you remember even after the bloom is gone.
There’s something less guarded about the iris. It doesn’t hide its beauty; it lets it go. And perhaps that is why it has become not only a beloved flower in my life, but a symbol in my thinking: of memory, of transformation, of the fleetingness of things that cannot be kept.
Thatis the thought I carry with me when I look at two artifacts found at The Walters Art Museum: one, a brooch shaped like an iris, made of gold, silver, sapphires, and demantoid garnets; the other, a gouache design drawing by Georges Fouquet, its lines light and gestural, its colors suggestive rather than fixed. One was delicate and flat, an idea taking form. The other was solid, weighty, permanent. Between them lived a quiet tension—the difference between inspiration and execution, between nature and artifice, between the found and the forged.
Georges Fouquet’s gouache drawing is the first gesture—a study in how to turn a natural form into ornament. It is not precise in a technical sense; rather, it is fluid. The pale blues and whites are softly blended, more atmospheric than literal. The stem bends naturally, and the leaves trail off like unfinished thoughts. It is a whisper of the final piece, a glimpse at the artist’s intention before the alchemy of jewelry-making begins.
But more than that, the sketch captures something of the living iris that the brooch cannot. It breathes. It moves. Its incompleteness feels honest, like a memory that hasn’t hardened into story. There is a humility in it. It understands that the flower itself—free, untamed—is already enough.
And yet, Fouquet knew what he wanted. The Art Nouveau movement, in which he was a leading figure, was rooted in the transformation of the natural world into wearable art. Nature wasn’t just observed—it was reinterpreted, stylized, and made intimate. The sketch is not a scientific study. It is the first turning of a wild bloom into something that can be possessed.
The final brooch is breathtaking. Set in gold, the iris’s stem twists in a gentle curve. Leaves, inlaid with demantoid garnets, shimmer a deep green. The bloom itself is forged from silver and paved with sapphires so dark they echo the night sky. It gleams with a kind of permanence that the real flower, or even the sketch, cannot offer.
But in becoming an object of luxury, the iris is also changed. No longer rooted in soil or shifting with the wind, it becomes still. Frozen. Eternal. The sensual asymmetry of the real flower becomes measured and fixed. Its wildness is tamed. The brooch is no longer just a flower—it is a possession.
There is something almost alchemical in this transition. Fouquet’s sketch, full of breath and softness, becomes a hardened object. The intangible becomes tangible. But that transformation comes at a cost. The brooch, though exquisite, has lost the ephemeral grace of the original.
The iris has long been a symbol of transcendence. Named for the Greek goddess Iris, who connected heaven and earth, the flower has stood at the threshold between worlds. It has adorned the arms of French kings in the form of the fleur-de-lis. In Japanese art and poetry, it represents the brief but beautiful arc of life. In the Victorian “language of flowers,” the iris stood for wisdom, hope, and faith.
Yet this symbolic richness is democratized in nature. Irises bloom in ditches and gardens, accessible to any who pass. They ask nothing. They are there for the world.
But when turned into a brooch—made from sapphires and gold—the flower is transformed into something exclusive. It no longer belongs to all. It becomes a marker of wealth, of class, of ownership. What was once ephemeral and free is now rare and permanent—and no longer universally accessible.
Ruby Payne, whose work on the hidden rules of economic class has shaped how I see my students, reminds us that poverty and privilege express themselves not just in income but in access to experiences, symbols, and values. A flower in the field is accessible to anyone with eyes to see. But a jeweled brooch, displayed under glass or clasped to the lapel of the elite, speaks another language entirely.
The sketch and the jewel, placed side by side, seem to echo that gap.
I’ve grown irises. I’ve watched them rise after rain. I’ve crouched down, camera in hand, trying to capture their color before it fades. I’ve stood over the place where they once were, after the petals fall and the green turns to withered stalk. They’re fragile. That’s part of their gift. They remind us that beauty doesn’t last—but that it was here.
Maybe that’s why we try to preserve it. We draw it. We carve it. We set it in precious stones. We turn it into things we can wear, or frame, or lock away in museums. And that urge isn’t wrong. It’s just human. We want to keep what moves us.
But we should also be honest: in preserving, we sometimes lose something essential. The brooch will never wilt. But it will also never bloom.
Gazing at the brooch and the sketch, I feel something stir. The brooch is impressive. The sketch, moving. Together, they told a story—not just of a flower, but of our human longing to stop time. To freeze what is fleeting. To turn the ordinary into treasure.
But for me, the true iris still lives in memory. In that field behind my grandmother’s house. In the moment of kneeling down to watch it sway in the wind. In the knowledge that something so lovely could appear without permission, and disappear just as freely.
Maybe that is why I love irises. Because they bloom not to be possessed, but simply to be seen.
And that, to me, is the highest form of beauty.