The Legend of the Mardi Gras Pumpkin played out in Art Glass

New Orleans is a city with a soul. I don’t know why. It had one long before I rolled into town as a freshman at Tulane University. And at 18 I didn’t really care what made New Orleans soulful, I just enjoyed it. From the Audubon Zoo across the street from campus to the esplanade along the Mississippi from where you looked down on the river but, weirdly, looked down further into the city, to the amazing French Quarter and the crazy beignets at Café Du Monde. Ah yes, and Cooter Brown’s late night cheese fries and Popeye’s even later buttery biscuits . . . whoa, nice trip down memory lane. New Orleans was a fantastic city in which to learn both academically and emotionally. I miss it.

We almost lost New Orleans four years ago and as we enter another hurricane season this month, let’s all send out our most positive Karma to the Crescent City and all the cities, towns, hamlets, and whistle stops along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts.

New Orleans is still rebuilding her infrastructure, her neighborhoods, her soul. Rosetree Glass Studios was “lucky” if you can call it that, in that their home and business was not flooded by Katrina. The Algiers section of the city where Rosetree calls home, was lashed by winds that stripped trees, ripped off roofs, and caused all manner of destruction, but without the standing water that inundated lower lying areas of the city, glass artist Mark Rosenbaum and his family were able to get back to work relatively soon after Katrina blew through.

When we talked with Mark in February, he introduced us to his remarkable glass pumpkins. He said he was inspired to create the colorful gourds by a hundred years old legend and the modern legend sparked by the hurricane of the century. Here’s how they go.


A legend is told of a magical occurrence three-hundred years or so ago. In the mysterious backwaters of the Barataria bayous in Louisiana, a crop of spectacular golden pumpkins was discovered. The valuable vegetation grew in the murky area that was believed to be the secret hiding place of ill-gotten pirate treasure. This incredible discovery remained a mystery until the present day.

After Hurricane Katrina, a new harvest of incredible pumpkins surfaced along the bayous. The pumpkins were not golden, but multi-colored in hues of purple, green, and gold. Experts have analyzed the phenomenon and have speculated that high concentrations of Mardi Gras beads and dubloons found deposited near the colorful treasures enhanced their growth.

Still a mystery, scientists have named them Curcubita Festivalis. Those lucky enough to own one call them "Mardi Gras Pumpkins"!


Mark’s pumpkins are thought to bring very good luck, but whether or not you adhere to the Louisiana bayou magic infused into the legends past and present, there is no denying the pumpkins are fantastic. We hope you like them as much as we do.