In October of 1971, my grandmother, Neenie, visited a small gallery on the Opernring in Vienna, Austria. There, she purchased a beautiful floral still life by Austrian artist Gunter Müller, a painter trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna who worked in the meticulous tradition of the Old Masters.

The painting depicts an abundant gathering of flowers emerging from a deep black background. Delicate white lilies, pink roses, tulips, and tiny blossoms intertwine in a composition reminiscent of seventeenth-century Dutch floral paintings. Each flower is lovingly rendered, a small celebration of the natural world and its fleeting beauty.

More than fifty years later, the painting remains in our family, accompanied by its original handwritten gallery receipt, dated October 5, 1971, and a typewritten biography about the artist.

This wax seal is my tribute to that painting, to my grandmother, and to the beautiful things that pass from one generation to the next, spanning all the way back to the Dutch masters.

May the flowers we love continue to bloom long after we are gone.