Honey from Bees, Figs from Thistles

G. Owen Bonawit was a prominent American stained-glass and painted glass artist, active from the 1910s to 1941. During this period, he produced original and imitative works of stained glass, pictorial leaded glass, and other decorative architectural elements for homes, schools, and libraries, and other public buildings. His most notable work was a monumental commission for more than six hundred panels of stained glass for the Yale University Library, which was completed between 1930 and 1931. At Cranbrook, Bonawit glasswork appears in Hoey Hall at Cranbrook School, Christ Church Cranbrook, and in Cranbrook House itself.

This round panel is one of two in Cranbrook House created by Bonawit. In conversation with Mark Coir, then Director of Cranbrook Archives, Henry Scripps Booth recalled that this panel, its counterpart, a figure of a knight (CEC 697), and two pictorial leaded window panels (CEC 1007 and CEC 1049) were commissioned by him from Bonawit for his architectural office, Thornlea Studio. According to Henry Booth, they were installed in Cranbrook House instead after George Gough Booth saw them and decided they deserved a more prominent display location. However, some discrepancies between the dates recalled by Henry and those in Cranbrook House records cast doubt on this possible point of origin for the Bonawit windows.

A woman in medieval costume, standing on a unicorn, holds a shield bearing a thistle, Henry’s chosen symbol, and a bee, representing the Booth family. Around the rim, Henry’s motto is written in a Gothic script: “Honey from bees, figs from thistles.” The motto is based on a saying of George Booth’s, “Look to the Bees,” and a passage from the Bible, Matthew 7:16—“[y]e shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” In its original context, the quotation is a warning against false prophets, who are, like thistles, troublesome and unfruitful. Thistle was Henry’s nickname from early youth, and he would often sign his art and writing as “Thistle.” Henry may have intended the motto as a self-deprecating gesture, implying the questionable value of his own creative work, or to suggest that good may come from unpromising beginnings.

Mariam Hale
2023-2025 Collections Fellow
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
January 2024