BATS as a motif

Bats flapped into our lives, decoratively speaking, during the Aesthetic Movement of the late 19th century. As fascination with orientalism spread, fans, plum blossoms, and ginkgo leaves were everywhere. The bat was a related motif. In Chinese, pronunciation of the words for “bat” and “happiness” are both “fu.” In Japanese, the bat has the same symbol as “luck.” We think a bat is spooky, but it’s the Asian equivalent of the Bluebird of Happiness. • In the 1880s and ’90s, then during the Art Nouveau and Arts & Crafts movements, bats appeared on pottery, giftware and jewelry, occasionally on furniture, even in a French Art Nouveau wallpaper (right, reproduced today by Trustworth Studios). Nature motifs fell from favor with Art Deco’s geometry, and the bat was banished to the dark eaves of the art world. —