Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library

Order of Free Gardeners Textile
1820-1860
Maker not marked
England or Scotland
Cotton, linen, silk, ink
Overall: 30"h x 26"w
Loaned by the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts
GL2004.3580

Textile printed with symbols associated with the Free Gardeners, colored light brown, green, and dark blue, with pink binding. Along the bottom are three columns marked A, N, and S. Beside and between the columns are images of an hourglass, Adam and Eve with the tree of knowledge, a beehive, and a scythe. The center section shows Adam and Eve with cornucopias at their feet. Between them is a shield bearing an image of a tree with a serpent wound around it. Symbols depicted in the top section include a sun, an all-seeing eye, a moon and stars, a dove, an ark, a clasp knife, concentric circles surrounding a delta, and a square and compasses on top of a Bible. On either side of the Bible are the letters P, H, G, and E. The edges are finished with an applied binding of pink silk. The backing is a beige cotton or linen. Handwritten on the back in brown ink at top, "Unity Lodge / No. 18" and "Unity Lodge / No. 18 / Joseph Stoppard."

The Order of Free Gardeners originated in England and Scotland in the 1600s with the goal of regulating and supporting gardening and gardeners. Along with symbols and tools associated with gardening and the Garden of Eden, in the 1800s the group also incorporated Masonic symbols into its iconography. On this textile, the letters P, H, G, and E represent rivers that are associated with the story of the Garden of Eden: the Pishon, Hiddekei, Gihon, and Euphrates. The letters at the base of the columns stand for the names of gardeners mentioned in the Bible: Adam, Noah, and Solomon.