Hexafoil and hex signs
A six-petalled compass design found across Europe, and the painted star discs of Pennsylvania barns.
Also: daisy wheel, Pennsylvania Dutch hex signs, barn stars, apotropaic marks
The hexafoil, or daisy wheel, is a six-petalled rosette that can be drawn with a compass in one sweep. It is carved on English church doors, beams and furniture, and was long thought to protect against evil, though no old source says so. In Pennsylvania, painted discs with stars and rosettes decorate barns in German-speaking farming communities, the Pennsylvania Dutch. They were popularly called hex signs from the German Hexe, witch, in the twentieth century, when tourism spread the name. Folklorists such as Don Yoder concluded that most were decoration and a mark of pride in the farm. Some makers today sell them as luck symbols, and others reject the witch link. Pennsylvania German folk healing, braucherei, is a separate tradition.