The Fleur de Lis, New Orleans, Frenchtown NJ
Our tribute to the unofficial symbol of our hometown, Frenchtown, New Jersey and it's relationship to another famous French town, New Orleans, Louisiana
The fleur de lis can be seen all over our hometown of Frenchtown. It is part of our daily visual landscape here. Our French heritage is a much debated issue here, but there is no time to go into that here.
In January of 2005 we took a vacation to New Orleans, seeking a warm climate and great food. We were not disappointed at all, and we took thousands of photos.
One of the first photos that we took was of a Fleur de Lis. This famous symbol for everything French was everywhere in the city and we photographed it so much that the photos turned into a project of sorts: "The Fleur de Lis Documentary"
Shown to the left, is a grouping of those New Orleans Fleur de Lis images and some from Frenchtowner.com. All of the images from our site were created with Paint Shop Pro. Feel free to use any of our fleur de lis images for free, but please give us credit for the design with a link.
A few months after we visited New Orleans, one of God's Great Cities, was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. It was an unspeakably horrible experience to watch what happened to the city we had fallen in love with, and to see the citizens of this remarkable city go through such horror.
The tragedy affected us so deeply that we were somewhat timid in making our vacation plans for the following year. We were insanely afraid that the next Southern city we chose to visit might somehow be blown off the face of the earth like New Orleans was. Thankfully it wasn't, or we would have never wanted to visit another city, afraid that we might doom it too.
Anyway, I digress a bit too much here, but it all makes sense in some strange way, because this is not just a tribute to the symbol of French culture in America, but it also a tribute to the symbol of New Orleans, to the city itself, and to our prayers for it's steady and sure renaissance.
Other Fleur de Lis resources online:
Variations on the Fleur De Lis Design
Origin of the Fleur de Lis, Fleur-de-Lys, Flower-de-Luce
Fleur de Lis Merchandise from ARTegrity
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