19/11/2024
More than a timeless treasure of summer, a botanical anomaly marvel, a complex delicacy… Figs have held significant meaning since ancient times as a symbol of nourishment, knowledge, and cultural heritage.
Not quite a fruit, a fig is an inverted flower or syconium: a hollow, fleshy receptacle lined with numerous tiny flowers on its inner surface.
“The fig is a very secretive fruit.
As you see it standing growing, you feel at once, it is symbolic:
And it seems male.
But when you come to know it better, you agree with the Romans, it is female” —an ode to the late summer: Figs by D.H. Lawrence, from Unrhyming Poems.
More about this visual story at byalexiademicheli.substack.com 🌀꩜
Credits:
₁. Goethe’s Italian Journey by
₂. Botanical illustration by Mary Daisy Arnold, 1915
₃. Odysseus Between Scylla and Charybdis by William Bromley, engraving and etching, 1806
₄. Figs in platter (source unknown)
₅. Figs by
₆. Untitled (Erotos) by Nobuyoshi Araki, 1993
₇. The Old Fashioned by .skg
₈. In Figs by
₉. Fig Tintype by .nl
₁₀. Fig Tart by , oldest bakery in Paris since 1730
₁₁. Bunches of Fruits by Jan Davidsz de Heem (c. 1651)
₁₂. “Figs are inverted flowers” by
₁₃. Fig Leaf Cream & Fresh Fig Cake by
₁₄. Fig Nails by .nuha
₁₅. Rounds of tests for McQueen show after—party menu by Zélikha Dinga via
