Peacock or Phoenix?

Recently we saw a pair of chairs with a peacock or phoenix on their crest rails. It looks like a peacock, but I think it’s a phoenix. Why? Because of its symbolism.

The peacock carries little, if any, symbolic meaning, whereas the phoenix is loaded with it. The bestiary of Pierre de Beauvais describes the Phoenix like this:

“It wears on its head a crest like the peacock; its breast and its throat are resplendent with red, and it gleams like fine gold; towards its tail it is blue as the clear sky.”

According to the legend, there was only one phoenix alive at one time and it lived in India. When it reached the age of 500 years, it filled its wings with sweet smelling spices and flew to Egypt. There, a priest prepared an altar topped with kindling and dry wood. The phoenix lay on the pyre and ignited the kindling by striking its beak against a stone. It fanned the fire with its wings and was quickly reduced to ashes. Next day, a small wormlike creature emerged from the ashes and in two more days it had grown into another Phoenix. On this day, the third, it saluted the priest and flew back to India.

Obviously, the phoenix symbolized the resurrection of Christ. But it could also refer to the restoration of the monarchy, and thus be a sign of loyalty to the crown. In this vein, it might refer also to the hereditary nature of the monarchy – “The King is dead. Long live the King.”

Medieval bestiaries were concerned with symbolic meanings and exotic stories: not at all with anatomical exactitude. Sometimes the phoenix has a crest, sometimes not; sometimes it has a long tail, sometimes a short. Who cares – it was what it stood for that mattered. The man who carved these crest rails had never seen a phoenix, but he had seen peacocks. So this bird looks like a peacock but means like a phoenix.