Ivory Snowdrop

The snowdrop is the birth flower for January. The Ivory Snowdrop is a ceramic January birth flower gift from a studio that has been making ceramic flowers in Toronto since 1999, stocked in the Berkshire Botanical Garden. It ships gift-ready. It hangs in 90 seconds. The January person receives a wall object with botanical institutional endorsement from the same collection a botanical garden chose.

Ivory wall art in a room with color reads as the quiet point that makes the color look intentional. The Ivory Snowdrop on a wall with other Chive pieces reads as the breath between statements — the piece that makes the colored pieces around it look more considered by contrast. On its own on a white wall it is nearly invisible from across the room and reveals its form at close range. The Berkshire Botanical Garden carries it.

The person who says they have everything is unlikely to have a ceramic ivory snowdrop from a studio stocked in the Berkshire Botanical Garden. The snowdrop is the January birth flower. The ceramic version is the permanent interpretation of the January flower in ivory from a Toronto studio that has been making ceramic flowers since 1999. The person who has everything receives a January birth flower gift with botanical institutional endorsement. They are running out of objections.

The snowdrop (Galanthus) blooms in late winter, often pushing through snow — which is the source of both the common name and the birth month assignment. It is one of the earliest flowers of the year, appearing in January and February when most other plants are dormant. In Victorian floriography it was associated with hope and the promise of spring. The ceramic version is ivory rather than the snowdrop's natural white, giving the glaze a warmth the living flower does not have.

The Ivory Snowdrop works alongside the Ivory Daffodil, the Ivory Autumn Azalea, and the Ivory English Rose from the same collection as a study in white and ivory across multiple botanical forms. The snowdrop reads as the most delicate. The daffodil as the most architectural. The azalea as the most abundant. Together they create an ivory botanical arrangement that demonstrates what the people at Chelsea meant by you cannot make a bad combination.

The Ivory Snowdrop is a specific gift for anyone with a relationship to January — whether born in it, married in it, or the kind of person who finds meaning in the flower that appears before the calendar agrees that spring has started. The ceramic version is permanent, which is what you want from something associated with the month when most botanical things are still dormant. The Berkshire Botanical Garden carries it.

The snowdrop's form — small, nodding, three outer petals and three inner petals — is one of the more technically interesting translations in the English Garden Collection because the small scale requires precise execution. The nodding quality of the snowdrop is captured in ceramic by the angle of the form. The ivory glaze gives it warmth that the natural white snowdrop does not have. The Berkshire Botanical Garden carries it. They see real snowdrops in season and decided the ceramic interpretation belonged.

The snowdrop was assigned to January by Victorians who found the botanical timing convenient — it blooms in January and February, making it the natural candidate for the first month. The ceramic version has been in a kiln in Toronto and is not currently blooming. Whether it finds the January assignment appropriate given that it is no longer subject to seasonal conditions is not something we have determined. It hangs on walls in the Berkshire Botanical Garden gift shop in every month of the year, including January. We consider this an acceptable relationship with the birth month.