Museum Crest Card Holder

Handmade in India, these genuine leather Card Holders are stamped with the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s crest. 

Isabella asked her friend, artist and writer Sarah Wyman Whitman, to design this distinctive crest. Whitman’s illustration depicts a coat of arms encircled by laurel leaves, flanked by roses with the motto “C’est mon plaisir”—French for “it is my pleasure.”  The sentiment is one of Isabella's mottoes and in the words of her biographer,  Morris Carter, "the reason and, in her opinion, the justification for her every action." 

At the center of the coat of arms is a phoenix, a mythical beast who rises from the ashes reborn. As a symbol of rebirth and immortality, the use of the phoenix is fitting for the institution that Gardner directed to be preserved for the “education and enjoyment of the public forever.” 

Measures 4" x 3.25"
1 card slot on front
3 card slots beneath buttoned flap