![Embroidered German letter case with a poem and an image of a temple. by [W.M.]](https://images.vialibri.net/production/28/12610---height_450.jpg?v=1761567764)
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![Another image of Embroidered German letter case with a poem and an image of a temple. by [W.M.]](https://images.vialibri.net/production/28/12610_2---800.jpg?v=1761567772)
![Another image of Embroidered German letter case with a poem and an image of a temple. by [W.M.]](https://images.vialibri.net/production/28/12610_3---800.jpg?v=1761567769)
[W.M.] ~ Embroidered German letter case with a poem and an image of a temple.
A letter case or wallet of light brown silk elaborately embroidered on the outside with a rose bush and a clump of forget-me-nots with tendrils of the same flowers spreading across both sides in many coloured silks. The interior is superb with the same tendrils snaking acorss both interiors and with an embroidered poem in German on one side and a Roman temple containing a flame on the other, signed and dated with the needle W.M. and 1800. Pink silk lining to the interior pockets. The outside is a little darkened and has some marks including what looks like offset from tape or a sticker, the interior is in excellent condition. All in all a remarkable survival.
The poem, which was a common poem in German friendship albums of the first quarter of the 19th century, is in German and in translation reads:
“May it bloom beneath your feet.
A spring song sweet and light
Where blue flowers pray for me:
Forget me not”.
The temple with a sacred flame burning inside it is apparently a rendering in needlework of the Temple of Vesta in Rome, which was created in honour of the Vestal Virgins. The flame symbolises the hearth as the centre of Roman life and home so perhaps this wallet was embroidered for a family member or great friend who was leaving home hence the ‘forget me nots’ and the home fires burning. It may well have been embroidered. for rather than by ‘W.M’.