White Water Lily Coffee Mug

Kate Carlyle's water lily coffee mugs are functional objets d'art. Fill one with a fine coffee from J. Martinez & Company, close your eyes and journey to an enchanted land of remarkable and subtle flavours. The water lily as an ornamental form and a symbol is important in Egypt and countries of Hindu and Buddhist obedience.

The Egyptian lotus is a white water lily, Nymphaea lotus, and it was in Egypt that the water lily was first used as a decorative form on the capitals of columns over 5,000 years ago. Fundamentally the lotus symbolizes fertility, and its other meanings seem to stem from this aspect. Hence the lotus as a seat for divinities emphasizes their generative force. The lotus also symbolizes the sun. Closing its flower at night and opening with the first morning rays, the lotus was the symbol for Nerfertem, the Egyptian god who personified the rising sun and who supposedly emerged from a lotus every morning and retired into it every night. Also a symbol for the god Horus, ruler of the sky, when Egyptian rulers died they were believed to be reborn from lotus flowers as a divinity, henceforth belonging to the world of the gods.

9.3 fl. oz. capacity