MME Designs's Weblog

Ideas need light to grow… design by Meredith Eliassen, 2018.

Ideas need light to grow… a conversation

Bird: And air!

Oak leaf: parvis e glandibus quercus

Lil’ Wum: Bird-brains… Translation: Tall oaks from little acorns grow… whew!

Merry VIV: Posterity explores ancestors through printed leaves.

During the Women’s March in 2016, and image of an acorn on a poster showed that buried ideas can grow. An idea can take centuries to unfold, yet appear to turn on like a lightbulb. Parvis e glandibus quercus means that great things often have small beginnings. This is an early variant of ‘mighty oaks from little acorns grow’ found in Geoffrey Chaucer’s epic tragedy of two lovers Troilus and Criseyde (1374),”as an ook cometh of a litel spyr” [meaning sapling] that came from the ancient Greeks via Boccaccio.