MOMENTS IN POT CULTURE: THE GERANIUM

Words by Jessica Peace

We are not the only ones obsessed…

In the early 19th century, Charles Peale named each of his children after famous painters - there’s an idea if you’re stuck. Rembrandt Peale’s painting of his brother Rubens, ‘Rubens Peale with a Geranium’ (1801), is not just a nice pic of a lad with a pot, young Rubens is apparently holding the first geranium in America...

British Music Hall sensation Nellie Wallace belted out the song ‘Geranium’ by composer Sam Collins in the early 1900’s; in the lyrics she wakes up with her toe in her lover’s eye - we’ve all been there.

20th century American poet and Pulitzer prize winner Theodore Roethke explored human nature through pots, cuttings and hot glass panels in his “Greenhouse Poems” including the moving ‘The Geranium’ - it’s a good’un.

Marilyn Monroe would answer when asked which perfume she puffed, ‘Chanel No. 5’, but her mates say she was also a fan of a geranium note and bought stacks of Floris ‘Geranium Rose’.