Poirot brooch studies. Acrylic on paper.
Since I have a lot of catching up to do, what with posting (or re-posting) things I’ve concocted over the past year, I might as well start from the beginning. These little brooch studies (the flowers are a little over an inch wide) were possibly the first “fan art” kind of thing I made pertaining to Poirot, and were done about a year ago. Fans of the television series will recognize his silver-and-amethyst lapel brooch, which in the context of the series was presented to him by Virginie Mesnard in The Chocolate Box.
I was actually thinking of Curtain when I made these little painted studies, and themes of death and life, which are represented by the poppy and the white rose. Poppies show up from time to time in my fan art, as they have some natural associations with Poirot: World War I, British-Belgian relations, Ypres, In Flanders Fields and that side of things. The flowers also commonly symbolize themes like drugs (e.g. opium) and death. White roses (as well as red) have associations with England, and signify truth and new life. Both poppies and white roses are considered to be “remembrance” flowers.
For more on the boutonniere in general, check out this article from The Art of Manliness blog. (The website’s symbol is, appropriately enough, a mustache.) 🙂
Seven Storeys High 
Your blog is coming along nicely. Two years ago my wife bought me one of those brooches.. The funny thing is we forgot flowers for it when we went on the Orient Express. Solution: scavenging the platform at Innsbruck, picking wildflowers out of the cracks in the cement😚
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👍👍👍
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Any ideas what the little purple flowers were that he wore in his?
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Hi Darrell– It’s a good question! There were an assortment of flowers that graced Poirot’s vase brooch, so I couldn’t be precisely sure. But I think I might know the ones you mean. Quite possibly, something like lavender or heliotrope…
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Thank you for the reply! I meant the ones in the photo on this post. He had white ones a time or two that I noticed but it was always those tiny purple ones that struck me most often. My wife just bought me one for my suit lapel because of my recent obsession with the series (it started with Benoit Blanc in knives out and all of the references the director had to Poirot, even if primarily Ustinov, but it led me back to the series I had seen parts of as a teen) and I wanted to see how well flowers actually managed in it. Figured might as well try accuracy if I could. Love the blog. Google has led me here many times as I’ve searched for details on props, wardrobe and just what the heck his tisane was made up of.
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I hadn’t even double-checked the content of the post to see the photo! 😉 No, I’m afraid I can’t identify them; sometimes the flowers look as though they might be dried. I applaud your Poirot-like striving for accuracy and am humbled that you have come to my corner of the blogosphere for assistance. 🙂 I think your best bet would be an actual botanist or florist type. It never even occurred to me to try to catalogue the flowers he wears; that would have been a good idea for a post!
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No worries! I knew a lot of these were old posts.The heliotrope you mentioned looks fairly close and for a production to ensure they stayed the same, I could see them using dried or fake flowers (even if I think Poirot would have made sure they were fresh every morning).
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