Wildflower jewelry linked to Jefferson
If you’d like to celebrate the 265th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s birth today, you might consider his gifts to botany.
That’s what jewelry designer Rebecca Worth did in creating her Twinleaf collection.
Living in the Richmond area and wanting to design something special for The Jefferson Hotel, Worth wondered: “What’s a way of embracing that history?”
In researching Thomas Jefferson, “I came across the twinleaf,” she said.
The twinleaf is a wildflower whose Latin name is Jeffersonia diphylla. At the May 1792 meeting of the American Philosophical Society, Benjamin Smith Barton assigned the flower to a new genus, Jeffersonia, to honor Jefferson’s knowledge of natural history, “especially in botany and zoology.”
The perennial with simple white flowers usually blooms around Jefferson’s birthday.
“I wanted to have a piece for The Jefferson . . . and the twinleaf was perfect,” Worth said. “I didn’t know there was a flower named after him.”
Worth, who has participated in fashion shows at The Jefferson and has bridal headpieces from her other collections at The Salon at The Jefferson, shared her twinleaf concept with Loys McLaughlin, manager of the hair salon.
