Pollinators of Empire: Napoleonic bees + fleur-de-lis by Su_G_©SuSchaefer Fabric bysu_g

‘Pollinators of Empire: Napoleonic bees + fleur-de-lis by Su_G’ (https://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/8696946): My entry in Spoonflower's 'Pollinators' Design Challenge. Original: Metallic poster pen, ink pen on paper; a lighter version is: ‘Napoleonic bees + fleur-de-lis by Su_G’ (https://www.spoonflower.com/fabric/9885834). © Su Schaefer 2019 There's a story – probably apocryphal (although as one self-confessed amateur historian noted, it sounds like Napoleon) – that when Napoleon moved into the Tuileries Royal Palace, he refused to spend money on new decor but didn't want the drapery – with its embroidered fleur-de-lis (the Royal emblem of the Bourbon) – to continue hanging in the palace windows. His solution was to hang the drapes upside down. The inverted symbol of the overthrown monarchy looked like a bee. From then on, the tenacious bee became the emblem of Napoleon Bonaparte. And in fact an upside down fleur-de-lis does look a bit like a bee… The golden bee was thought to be the oldest emblem of French sovereignty, although the earliest known form, discovered in 1653 in the tomb of the founder of the Merovingian dynasty (founded in 457AD), was supposedly modeled after a cicada. The fleur-de-lis as the traditional emblem of the Bourbon family had thus arguably also been that of France. And this is by no means the most interesting story of how the Napoleonic bee took flight! See more ‘formal' designs by Su_G. (https://www.spoonflower.com/collections/30622) See other designs by Su_G. (https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/su_g?sort=freshtastic) Original: Metallic poster pen, ink pen on paper, basic repeat. [Currently set @ Fabric: 200 ppi, Wallpaper: 200 ppi] [ Proofed on fabric @ 150 ppi // revised, reloaded - Mar 2020 // light background version published Jul 2020 // Filename: Napoleonic bees + Fleur de lis by Su_G_©SuSchaefer (prev. version: Napoleonic bees + Fleur de lis overlay) ]