Since Antiquity the Cicada always aroused the interest.

Where to find in the world of the insects a similar fame?

The Egyptians make of it a symbol of the music and represent it by a hiéroglyphe.

The Greeks make the symbol of the beauty of it, it is reproduced on certain parts of monnaie.Les Greek women put Cicadas out of gold like ornament in their hairstyle. One locked up some in cages, to intend them to sing. Homère compared the wise old men then, surrounding king Priam, with cicadas.

The Romans and their various successors, until our days, had only mistaken for the insect and its music. For Virgile, it was a raucous song and désageéable.

The Chinese make of it a “object” with the mode. Its image recovering the pieces of furniture, drawn on clothing.
It is present in the funerary rites, former Chinese posed an amulet in the shape of cicada on the mouth of the late one.
Since the Han Dynasty, an high official, close to the emperor, named “Large Cigaliste”, an army of hunters raised, especially of the children, who used a long pole of bamboo coated with paste or product sticking at the end to catch the cicadas on the trees. to provide to the aristocrats alive cicadas, out of cage, to offer.

Alive the Hopi Indians in Arizona name “Kachina” the supernatural powers. One of them names “Mahu”, that is to say Cigale, therefore the Kachina-cicada which accompanies by the dances which bring the rain.

The troubadours, to the XIII èmes century, carried like signs corporative, a cicada dried, on their hat.

Since thousands of ceramics Cicadas were sold in the souvenir shops, in Provence. Ceramics and various limp of musical cicadas which, opened, implies their song. Some make the covetousness of the collectors.

Here more than one century the workshops Louis Sicard in Aubagne produced earthenware Cicadas (represented on a branch of olive-tree with the famous currency of Provence "Lou souleù mi fa canta". In 1972 faience manufacture celebrates it is repurchased by the Workshop of Art Today, Sylvette Amy perpetuates the tradition and the know-how of Sicard while adapting the original forms to the colors of time. This dynamism which incarnates them, they knew to make it divide with their team unceasingly with the listening and the service of national or international customers always in the respect of work well done and in the speed of execution of the orders.

The cutler Gerard Julien, of Solliès-Bridge, was in despair to see that Provence did not have, following the example other French areas, his knife emblematic. He created the knife: "Lou Prouvençau". The Of Provence one with its broad handle cut in olive-tree, genévrier or boxwood and carved, its spring decorated with a cicada and its guilloched blade of a sun. It likes as much as Gerard Julien carried out a whole range, of the "vine grower" the "Magali" while passing by the collection marine.Ce knife is manufactured by the "Cutlery With the Shoe" (to visit their site )

We find our Cicada on the postcards; in postage stamps; painted or in relief on the crockery; like decorative object, out of porcelain or terra cotta, various sizes, to fix at the wall or to pose on a pedestal table; like paper weight; in a musical box, which, opened with the sun, implies their song; etc