Brush McCoy Zuni Art Vases and Hydrangea

A friend, who brought pears over to our house almost one year ago, recently sent some cut hydrangeas. (We used the pears with Roseville Mostique, to quite good effect if we do say so ourselves.) So, sticking with the American-Ohio pottery theme, we arranged the hydrangeas (that has a nice ring) with two Brush-McCoy Zuni Art pieces. The Zuni Art line was introduced in the early 1920s at a time when the swastika emblem was commonly used in the western world. Of course, the adoption of the symbol by the Nazi Party in Germany, as well in the 1920s, would change our thoughts about the symbol - if not forever, then at least for some time. The Nazi swastika has its “arms” going in the opposite direction than depicted on the Zuni Art pieces. What’s not clear is the use of “Zuni” in the line’s name. One might assume it was inspired by the art of the Zuni, a federally recognized Native American tribe. In Native American Art it can be called the “whirling log” and again, has its arms reversed from what is used on the pottery. Perhaps we are trying to find too much meaning in a name choice that was the child of whimsy and marketing?
On to the less controversial: how about those colorful hydrangeas? Quattrocchi gives the generic name Hydrangea origin as:

Greek hydor “water” and angeion, aggeion “a vessel,” referring to the shape of the fruit (but the fruit is a capsule).

There are no capsules to be seen in these pictures. In fact, it seems that we rarely see Hydrangea capsules. Each colorful moptop-type hydrangea flower head (inflorescence) shown here is composed of many smaller flowers. Too bad they didn’t use the Greek for moptop.

Hydrangeas are in the family Hydrangeacea and are native to southern and eastern Asia and North and South America. We would guess that most of the ones shown here (sorry, no names to be had) are cultivars of Hydrangea macrophylla.

Hydrangea in Brush McCoy Zuni Art (left) and Brush McCoy Zuni Art Vase on its Side (right)
 

Two Brush McCoy Vases