Portrait of St. Joseph in an Octofoil (TF 02) Ceramic Ornament

A beautiful portrait of St. Joseph garbed in a dark golden yellow robe and light blue mantle shaded in red violet. He holds a spray of lilies symbolizing purity in his right hand and a saw identifying his profession as carpenter in his left. The portrait is enclosed in an octofoil with uneven lobes—four large and four small—that is sometimes called a double quatrefoil. The quatrefoil and its variants are immensely popular design elements just now reviving a form first made popular in Medieval Gothic architecture. + Image Credit (TF 02): Antique Portrait of St. Joseph in an Octofoil from a devotional print originally published in chromolithography by L. Turgis & Fils, Paris, France, Pl. 68 (with German text), late 19th century, from the designer’s private collection of religious ephemera. + Principal Feast: March 19; Feast of St. Joseph the Worker: May 1