Sorbet Delft Blue Viola: The Flower Behind Our Indigo Print

The Viola cornuta has been growing in European gardens since the 1770s, when it was first collected from the high meadows of the Pyrenees. Two and a half centuries later, it's still one of the most reliable cool-season bloomers a gardener can plant — and the flower behind one of our most requested prints.

Sorbet Delft Blue is a specific cultivar within the Sorbet series, bred for an indigo-and-white bicolor so precise it earned a Fleuroselect Gold Medal. Each half-inch bloom carries small, heart-shaped petals and a delicate whiskered face — fine dark lines radiating from the center, the same marking that gives every Sorbet viola its expression. The name isn't a stretch, either: the contrast reads exactly like hand-painted Delft pottery, blue on white, precise and cool-toned.

Violas like this one carry an old meaning in the language of flowers — devotion, quiet remembrance, thoughtfulness — and the bicolor pattern is part of why. Collectors have prized indigo-and-white violas for exactly that contrast for as long as they've been cultivated.

From real flowers to abstract art, inspired by nature. We draw on the colors, markings and textures of real flowers, transforming their natural details into abstract patterns designed to be worn. Explore leggings and Viola Collection.