SPECIAL COLLECTIONS FOR BRAN CASTLE

We recently had the special honor and pleasure of collaborating with Bran Castle, creating some special and exclusive collections, which reflect both the history and the symbolism surrounding this castle, the subject of legends and inspiration for successful novels and films.

The Wagner House proudly presents below the result of this artistic endeavour.

LE LYS DE LA VIE

The Wagner Arte collection "Le Lys de la Vie" ("Lily of Life") is dedicated to Queen Maria of Romania, who from early on chose lilies as her symbol flowers, which she cultivated everywhere in the royal gardens, painted and revered in equal measure for their deeply sensual beauty and for their high esoteric fame.

The name of the collection is given by a story written by Maria herself in 1913, when she was only the Princess of Romania. Written as a fairy tale for children, "Lily of Life" appears as one of those legends reinvented in the art nouveau style. At a deeper level, it is a mystical story full of implications; reading it, you understand why for the Queen the lily became the symbol of full life, the fragrant flesh of the spirit.

The lily has become a symbol of purity from early on, regardless of the culture that worshiped it: either in ancient Egypt, where the lily was the flower of the goddess Isis, or during the Renaissance, in Christian culture, where the lily symbolizes the purity of the Virgin Mary. Sensing the symbolic value of the lily and its connection with divinity, some royal houses (the French Crown being the most famous) promptly adopted it, as a transcendental legitimation of the right to lead their subjects here on earth.

For the princess and later on for Queen Maria, the lily was a lifelong love. During a trip to Italy at the beginning of a wonderful spring, Queen Maria visiting the Palatine Hill, was moved by the grandeur of the palace of the emperors of Rome, but also delighted to see the lilies in bloom, scattered among the ruins. A single thought and a single ardent desire began to dominate her, namely that of having Palatine lilies to plant in the Cotroceni park.

Because she loved flowers a lot, and liked to be called the "gardening queen", Queen Maria can be considered the creator of exceptional private gardens, such as Cotroceni, Copaceni, Scroviste, Bran, Balcic.

And here is the starting point for the collection created by Ana Wagner to bring closer to the hearts of our contemporaries the deep feminine spirituality of the Queen, embodied by the symbolism of the lily. The lilies painted by Ana Wagner on porcelain with grace and gold are inspired by heraldry and the Queen's writings - this is how it happens that on the same pieces of porcelain we find quotes and references to that mystic of the lily that accompanied the Queen throughout this life and, certainly, beyond it.

IN BLOOM

Who said that beauty is tragic? In the past, mostly poets. Mythologies re-created nowadays confirm it. But, through the beauty of transposition, this tragedy carries with it the warm seeds of life, the core of gold and bone that is never cold, but vibrates with the trepidation of rebirth. Fertility of imagination and beauty are what will move the world forward - this is the secret creed of artists everywhere (that's why alchemists also claimed the dignity of being considered artists).

The tender, almost airy beauty of the porcelain pieces marked with the skull symbol created by Ana Wagner allows us to accept physical finitude, opening the door to a dormant spirituality, the existence of which we may not even have suspected.

If a creator like Alexander McQueen brought the skull back among the symbols of the contemporary world, giving it a touch of drama, but sometimes humor, and sometimes even sarcasm, Ana Wagner's paradigm is different, it is feminine.
Unlike the meditative drama of Alexander McQueen, who used the symbol of the skull in his concept of “savage beauty”, whose paradigm is perfectly illustrated by the photographs of the author as Hamlet, Ana Wagner has a feminine approach in which the symbol of the skull becomes delicate as a seed.

Included among the flowers and fine details, the skull is there not to scare us, but to draw our attention to the intensity that each moment of life demands from us, as well as to our only chances for eternity, which are beauty and love - the very central values and aesthetic direction of Wagner House. With "In Bloom" we are once again shown that experiencing beauty is both a physical and spiritual experience.

Along with the "In Bloom" jewelry launched last year, this year we are introducing the new pieces of the collection, which integrate skulls in the context of larger porcelain pieces, in surprising and gothic additions. Gothic allusions become lacework and enigma in the language of fine contours that characterize Wagner House. Thus, these porcelain objects become ideal gifts for all those who would like to include a message of admiration and amazement in a single gesture!