Peridot Stargazer Lily

Floral wall decor for a bedroom benefits from forms that face upward — they read as engaged with the viewer. The Peridot Stargazer Lily was bred to face upward, and the ceramic version carries that quality to the wall. The High Museum in Atlanta carries the collection. Bedroom walls with upward-facing botanical forms read as more dynamic than walls with flowers that face outward or downward.

Peridot green reads as botanical and warm in a bedroom — the green that connects the room to the natural world without introducing the coolness that darker greens can bring. On a white bedroom wall the Peridot Stargazer Lily reads as the botanical anchor that makes the white feel considered. The High Museum in Atlanta carries the collection. Their gift shop serves people who go home to bedrooms that have made specific decisions about color.

Art lovers who visit museums are the specific audience for a gift from the same collection the museum's gift shop carries. The Peridot Stargazer Lily is from a collection stocked in the High Museum, the San Diego Museum of Art, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. The art lover receives a wall object from the same collection three significant art institutions chose independently.

The stargazer lily was bred in the 1970s by Leslie Woodriff, who wanted a lily that faced upward rather than downward — traditional Oriental lilies nod downward, requiring the viewer to look under the flower. The stargazer solved this by facing the sky, hence the name. In ceramic, the upward-facing quality creates a piece that reads as engaged with whoever is looking at it. The High Museum decided it belonged in their collection.

The lily is associated with multiple birth months depending on the tradition — May, June, and August all have lily associations in different floriography systems. The stargazer, being a modern hybrid, was not assigned to a birth month by the Victorians. As a gift it carries the lily's general associations — purity, beauty, rebirth — in the specific upward-facing form bred for visibility. The peridot green version carries these in a color that lilies do not come in naturally.

The Peridot Stargazer Lily with the Lime Yellow Larkspur and the Peridot Green Maiden Lotus from the same collection creates a study in peridot and lime greens across three upward-reaching botanical forms. The stargazer reads as the most open. The larkspur as the most elongated. The lotus as the most cupped. Together they build a vertical botanical arrangement that reads as a composition rather than a collection of individual pieces.

Peridot sits between yellow-green and green — warmer than pure green, less yellow-dominant than chartreuse, softer than lime green. It is named for the peridot gemstone, which has a specific warm yellow-green that reads as both botanical and mineral. In the English Garden Collection, peridot is used across several forms because it cooperates with warm yellows, blues, and deep greens without competing with any of them.

The stargazer lily in nature is pink and white with dark spots and a strong fragrance that announces itself from several metres away. The ceramic version is peridot green with no spots and no fragrance — a departure on multiple dimensions simultaneously. Whether the peridot ceramic stargazer considers this a departure from botanical heritage or simply a different chapter is not accessible to us. The High Museum decided it belonged in their collection. We consider that adequate.