{"id":56,"date":"2013-02-13T10:47:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-13T10:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/13\/violets-on-mothering-sunday\/"},"modified":"2024-04-26T13:36:44","modified_gmt":"2024-04-26T12:36:44","slug":"violets-on-mothering-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/2013\/02\/13\/violets-on-mothering-sunday\/","title":{"rendered":"Violets on Mothering Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nA Posy of Violets on Mother\u2019s Day<\/o:p><\/span><\/h1>\n
\nMother\u2019s Day or Mothering Sunday has been celebrated
\nhere in Britain for a very long time.  Here I’m exploring some of the history of the Day and it’s links with scented flowers.<\/span><\/b><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nThe
\nterms Mother\u2019s Day<\/a><\/i> and Mothering Sunday<\/a><\/i> are used more-or-less
\ninterchangeably, but historically they are different events.  The modern Mother\u2019s Day was \u2018invented\u2019
\nin the United States by Julia Ward Howe<\/i>
\nwho wrote The Mother\u2019s Day Proclamation in 1870 and Ann Jarvis<\/i> and her daughter Anna<\/i>
\nwho, in the early years of the 20th Century first founded work-groups and later
\nstarted a campaign for an official US holiday.  President WoodrowWilson<\/a><\/i> signed that into US law in 1914, establishing the holiday and fixing
\nthe date as the 2nd Sunday in May. 
\nMany other countries, often replacing or incorporating existing
\ntraditions, have taken up this form and date since. <\/o:p><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Wild Violets for Mother’s Day
\npainting by artist Paul Wolber<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\nHere in Britain, the much older tradition of Mothering Sunday<\/i> retains its status as a
\nmovable feast, celebrated on the 4th<\/sup> Sunday of Lent.  Thought to go back to the 16th<\/sup>
\nCentury practice of returning to one\u2019s mother church<\/a><\/i> \u2013 usually the nearest Cathedral \u2013 on this day, dispersed families
\nwere thus enabled to be united. 
\nThis in turn is thought to derive from an earlier Roman festival
\nhonouring the mother goddess Cybele<\/i>
\nwhich was held in mid-March.<\/div>\n
\n
\nIn
\nthe Church of England, during the Mothering Sunday service in many churches it
\nbecame usual for children to give small posies of flowers to their mothers and
\nviolets in particular often featured in these: the practice was common in the
\n50s and still happens in some churches today.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\nViolets<\/o:p><\/h3>\n
\nViolets \u2013 the
\nscented kind \u2013 Viola odorata<\/a><\/i> \u2013
\nhave a special place in perfumery. 
\nThe scent of violet flowers is sometimes described as \u2018flirty\u2019 because
\nit seems to come and go \u2013 a feature of the ionones<\/a><\/i>
\nfrom which the scent is mainly
\ncomposed.  It has been valued in
\nperfumery for at least 400 years but the scent has always been difficult to capture. 
\nAround the end of the 19th<\/sup>
\nand beginning of the 20th<\/sup> century \u2013 just about when Mother\u2019s Day was
\nbeing established in the United
\nStates \u2013 violet perfumes were all the rage.  At this time something very special was available \u2013 violet
\nflower absolute \u2013 made by solvent extraction from violet flowers and distilled
\ndown to the essential principle of the scent
\nof violets.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

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\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n
<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Image courtesy of Wikipedia<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Even then it was very rare, very<\/i> expensive and exclusively used in the very best perfumes. We
\nthink that the last time violet flower absolute was extracted was around 1902:
\nafter that the increasing cost of labour made it uneconomic.  Estimates of what it would cost to
\nproduce today vary from $10,000 to $500,000 a kilo \u2013 not even the biggest
\nperfume houses can afford that. 
\nToday when you smell violet in a perfume it will be made with a clever
\ncombination of synthetic ionones and other chemicals present in the natural
\nscent, recreated and combined by skilled perfumers at a fraction of the cost of
\nextraction.  Perhaps surprisingly,
\nthat is true of many flower scents.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\nOddly enough though, the little violet has the last
\nword: even today perfumers the world over use one of a tiny number of natural green
\nnotes: violet leaf absolute<\/i> with just
\na touch of the violet flower hidden within it, it is a lovely material.  You\u2019ll see this romantically described
\nin the scent notes of a perfume as crushed violet leaves<\/i> \u2013 so next time you see
\nthat in a description, you\u2019ll know what it means.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

\nFlower Essences<\/o:p><\/h3>\n
\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Jacinth by Pell Wall<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

A posy of violets isn\u2019t
\nsomething you\u2019ll see in many florists any longer and you certainly shouldn\u2019t
\npick wild ones, but you could give the perfume equivalent of the posy of spring
\nflowers as a gift this Mother\u2019s Day. If you want real, natural essences they
\nare few: the only spring flower still routinely extracted is narcissus \u2013 a
\nfabulously beautiful, complex material made from Narcissus poeticus<\/a><\/i> \u2013 unfortunately it has two disadvantages, first that
\nit has a fabulous price to match it\u2019s beauty and second that, however lovely,
\nit does not smell at all like putting your nose to a narcissus flower: a
\nchallenge to the perfumer.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n
\n
\n<\/a><\/div>\n

One option is a posy of mixed
\nflowers \u2013 in my own range I have Jacinth<\/a> \u2013 a sparkling mix of roses, orange flower, ylang and lily and that precious
\nnarcissus absolute is in it too. <\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Deep Purple by Pell Wall<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Alternatively there\u2019s the Spring Flowers Collection<\/a><\/i> of light
\ntransparent and cheerfully springlike fragrances in which <\/i>you will find notes of violets, narcissus, and hyacinth plus of
\ncourse, crushed violet leaves . . . <\/span><\/div>\n

\n<\/i><\/span>
\n<\/i><\/span><\/div>\n
\nDeep Purple<\/i> is a true violet scent<\/a> that might make a perfect alternative to the
\ntraditional posy of violets on Mothering Sunday.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\n<\/div>\n
\nA version of this article<\/a> was first published in the March 2012 edition
\nof the Shropshire<\/a><\/i><\/span> Magazine<\/a><\/span><\/i><\/span>.<\/span><\/o:p><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Posy of Violets on Mother\u2019s Day Mother\u2019s Day or Mothering Sunday has been celebrated here in Britain for a very long time.  Here I’m exploring some of the history of the Day and it’s links with scented flowers. The terms Mother\u2019s Day and Mothering Sunday are used more-or-less interchangeably, but historically they are different […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[53,54,7,13,55,56],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":231,"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pellwallhelp.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}