Our Notes & References

Language of flowers and fortune-telling games in the Russian imperial library: a great example of this lovely book, in very attractive condition and without the foxing usually found. Complete with its hand-coloured plates.

The entertaining game of cartomancy, which interprets “the language of flowers”, is illustrated with six plates of 36 hand-coloured flowers and two plates listing their names. Players “create” their own bouquets by selecting flowers from the list, each carrying a specific meaning—such as the jonquil symbolising infidelity—to foresee challenges and triumphs in love and romance. This edition concludes with a fully engraved calendar for the year 1826.

“A proper present for a young lady or a suitable addition to the family’s collection of volumes sitting conspicuously on the “centre table” in the parlor” (Seaton), Oracles de Flore was first published in 1816 and is often attributed to Charles-François-Paul Delanglard, although we found an alternative attribution to Latour, who published other similar works. It gained great popularity, inspiring numerous other 19th-century romantic and prophetic floral games which explored the symbolic meanings of flowers. Generally joyful and frivolous, such floral divination books also “represent aspects of thought on the relationship between nature and man, and attitudes towards the study of nature itself” (Seaton).

Provenance

Bibliothèque de Tsarskoe Selo (black ink stamp with imperial double-headed eagle to upper fly-leaf).

Bibliography

Seaton, Beverly. “French Flower Books of the Early Nineteenth Century.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies, vol. 11, no. 1/2, 1982, pp. 60–71.