Economics in the Garden - The Ottoman Empire's Alluring Tulips

 Youth holding a tulip. Ottoman miniature by Abdulcelil Levni.  Abdulcelil Levni (d 1732) was an Ottoman court painter & miniaturist. He was born in Edirne in the late 17C & became the most prominent painter in the Ottoman Empire.

For the Ottoman gardener, the tulip was regarded as the holiest & most precious of flowers, & only the rose, narcissus, carnation & hyacinth were considered worthy enough to be planted alongside it.  The garden is central to the Muslim vision of paradise – an endless garden of delight filled with pavilions & fountains & carpeted with flowers of a beauty unequalled on earth.  Pious Muslims treated flowers almost as holy relics & often wore blooms in their turbans.  

Iznik Tulip Tile.

One of Omar Khayam’s best-known verses uses them as a metaphor for perfect female beauty & later poets also used the tulip as a symbol of perfection.

Lynne Galluzzo, a fine gardener & a great storyteller who lives in the town of Haymarket in Prince William County, Virginia, tells us that "originally cultivated in the Ottoman Empire, the tulip was introduced to Europe when the Austrian ambassador to the court of Suleyman the Magnificent sent a small shipment of bulbs back to the Hapsburg court in 1554.

Tulip on Marbled Paper

"The Turks had taken tulips from the wild & bred them to be something very different. In the wild they were short with open, starlike flowers; the Turks bred them to be long & slim, with petals that were almost dagger-like. They had patience & enthusiasm & enjoyed the tulip’s propensity to mature differently than the original flower the seed derived from. In fact, it was the constant changing nature of tulips that caused them to be thought of as the flower that is the most blessed by Nature because she played with it more than any other bloom.

Ottoman Textile

"In the Ottoman Empire at the time, tulips flourished as natural selection came into play: bees were attracted to the biggest & brightest flowers, & the Turks were selecting & reproducing the biggest & brightest blooms. Man & nature worked together at producing an abundance of amazing flowers.

Youth holding a tulip. Ottoman miniature by Abdulcelil Levni. Abdulcelil Levni (d 1732) was an Ottoman court painter & miniaturist. He was born in Edirne in the late 17C & became the most prominent painter in the Ottoman Empire.

"During the “Tulip Era” from 1718 to 1730, the Ottoman Empire’s Sultan Ahmed III’s love of tulips was so great that he held extravagant celebrations with the gardens filled with candles, music, lights & dancing girls every night the tulips were in bloom. These celebrations were so over-the-top that it was one of the factors leading to his being overthrown in 1730."

Garden Celebration for Women Late 17C - Scene of Valide Sultan-Bahce Partisi

Lady Montagu, wife of the English ambassador, wrote to her friends in England about her trip to Istanbul during 1717–18.  Lady Montagu criticized some of her predecessors & contemporary European visitors, who painted a negative picture of a declining empire with a capital plagued by disease & fires.

Iznik Tile With a Tulip

She was in Istanbul during the Tulip Age (1718–1730), which witnessed a construction boom by Sultan Ahmed III (1703–1730) & his son-in-law, Nevşehirli Ibrahim Pasha. The sultan also demonstrated a great interest in all varieties of tulips & had them planted in gardens everywhere to beautify Istanbul. The Tulip Age (Lale Devri) is considered Istanbul’s first serious cultural opening up to the West.

Garden Celebration for Men - Scene of Sultan Ahmed III.

At the end of Sultan Ahmed’s reign, the tulip was no longer in vogue. Other flowers had taken its place. In Holland, the Dutch began to cultivate bulbs, gradually building up a steady business again.

You an find more of Lynn Galluzzo's tulip musings & garen insights here at The Piedmont Lifestyle. 

Economics in the Garden - 1648 Pricey, precious Tulips Linger in a Dutch Garden

1647-8 Samuel Van Hoogstraten (Flemish 1627-1678) Portrait of Johan Cornelisz Vijgeboom and His Wife in a Garden painted from an unusual perspective

This painting was created after the painter returned to his hometown in Dordrecht, where he was initially taught by his father. He moved to Amsterdam shortly after his father's death in December 1640, & received further training in the studio of Rembrandt; at the time when Carel Fabritius was also a student  there. The painter's preoccupation with perspective may have been stimulated by his contact with Fabritius.  Hoogstraten traveled to Vienna & Rome (1651-3), & later to London (1662-6). After living for some years in The Hague, Hoogstraten returned to Dordrecht in 1673, writing a treatise on painting, in 1678, the year of his death. His treatise includes reminiscences of his time at Rembrandt's studio & of Rembrandt's views on painting. Hoogstraten does criticize his teacher Rembrandt for his excessive naturalism.

Economics in the Garden - 17C Tulips & Gardens in a Portrait of a Royal Child from Europe

1630s Unknown Spanish artist, A Royal Child Seated by a Vase of Flowers which includes tulips, a Monkey with a Garden beyond and the Figure of Pomona Walking in It

Economics in the Garden - 1632 Some Tulip Experts were Women

Illustration of an unspecified edition of Jacob Cats' Spiegel vanden Ouden ende Nieuwe Tijd

Two women in a garden; a young & an elderly woman standing outside in a walled garden with blooming tulips growing from the ground in front of them. The young woman holds a blooming flower, the elderly woman holds a withered flower.  A garden fountain is in the right background. This etching is after Adriaen van de Venne from an unspecified edition of Jacob Cats' "Spiegel vanden Ouden ende Nieuwe Tijd" (1st edition published in The Hague: 1632) 

Economics in the Garden - During Tulip-Mania a Bridegroom Might Accept 1 Tulip Bulb as an Entire Dowery

Gilbert Jackson [English Baroque Era Painter, active 1621-1642] A Lady of the Grenville Family with Tulips in her Hair and her Son

Lynne Galluzzo is a fine gardener & a great storyteller who lives in the town of Haymarket in Prince William County, Virginia.  She tells us that "tulips were something rare & sought after by the wealthy. In 1593, a famous bulb specialist, horticulturalist Carolus Clusius, took some Viennese bulbs with him to Holland. Because he was so boastful & covetous of his tulip bulbs & because he refused to part with them at any price, some angry but enterprising tulip enthusiasts banded together & stole the bulbs from him. Clusius was so broken from this that he gave up cultivating bulbs completely. However, the thieves embarked on tulip production at full throttle. Because the seeds from one tulip can produce many different varieties of flowers, Holland was soon filled with hundreds of different varieties.

Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641) Lady Jane Goodwin

"Sometimes one tulip in a garden of perhaps a hundred would bloom differently than the rest. It would unfurl with streaks of a contrasting color on the main body, often called flames, or feathers. That one unusual bulb was the prize bulb that could be sold for large amounts of money; a single bulb could even be used as currency to buy things of value like a house. Legends abound, including one about a miller that exchanged his whole mill for one bulb & a bridegroom that accepted one tulip as sufficient dowry. The Dutch tried some crazy things to increase the frequency of these special blooms, including sprinkling dry pigment powder over beds of white tulip bulbs. Unknown to them, the variations actually came from a virus that was spread from tulip to tulip by aphids. Because the prized, unusual bulbs were caused by a virus, the flowers were beautiful, but sick, & produced less-than-healthy bulbs.

Gilbert Jackson [English Baroque Era Painter, active 1621-1642] Portrait of a Lady with a Lace Collar Holding a Tulip

"Trading in tulip bulbs became so intense that people left thriving occupations to become bulb traders. Where the actual bulbs were once the currency, promissory notes for future bulbs were starting to be traded. Then on February 2, 1637, the auction market opened & there was no one willing to speculate with enormous amounts of money on the pieces of paper that represented a possible future bulb with a special flower. And just like a stock market crashing from over inflated values, the Dutch tulip market tanked. The only thing that survived was the Dutch knowledge & love for growing tulips. Holland is still a major producer of tulip bulbs."

Christine de Bade-Durlach (1645-1705), wife of Albert II de Brandebourg-Ansbach in 1665

You can find more of Lynn Galluzzo's tulip musings & garden insights here at The Piedmont Lifestyle.  

Economics in the Garden - 1600s The Great Dutch Tulip Folly - Tulip-Mania!

Jan Brueghel the Younger (1601–1678) Allegory of Tulipmania

In 1593, tulips from Turkey were introduced to the Dutch. The novelty of the new flower made it widely sought after & fairly pricey. After a few decades, the tulips contracted a non-fatal virus called mosaic, which didn't kill the tulip population but altered them causing "flames" of color to appear upon the petals. The color patterns came in a wide variety, increasing the rarity of an already unique flower. Tulips, which were already selling at a premium, began to rise in price according to how their virus alterations were valued. Many began to deal in bulbs, essentially speculating on the tulip market, which was believed to have no limits.

Jean-Léon Gérôme (French artist, 1824-1904) The Tulip Folly 1882. The scene depicts the late 1630s, where a Dutch soldier guards one potted tulip, while other troops (or speculating investment bankers?) stomp out fields of competing, less-precious flowering bulbs.

Bulb speculators began to fill up inventories for the growing season, depleting the supply further & increasing scarcity & demand. Soon, prices were rising so fast & high that people were trading their land, life savings, & whatever they could liquidate to get more tulip bulbs. Many Dutch persisted in believing they would sell their hoard to hapless & unenlightened foreigners, thereby reaping enormous profits. Somehow, the already overpriced tulips enjoyed a twenty-fold increase in value - in one month!

A portrait of a precious Dutch daughter with a precious Dutch tulip. 1631 Unknown artist Inscription [at upper left] Sarra Depeyster AEtatis 30 Maenden 23 Mey 1631

The inflated prices were not an accurate reflection of the value of a tulip bulb. As it happens in many speculative bubbles, some prudent people decided to sell & store their profits. A domino effect of progressively lower & lower prices took place, as everyone tried to sell while few were buying. The price began to dive, causing people to panic & sell regardless of losses.

Jacob Marrel (1634) Still life with a tulip

Dealers refused to honor contracts & people began to realize they traded their homes for a piece of greenery; panic & pandemonium were prevalent throughout the land.

Detail of Jan Brueghel the Younger's Satire of tulip mania c. 1640. Owning & flaunting rare specimens was a reflection of wealth & standing within society. Up until the early 1600s, tulips were only a single color. The enticing change came about with the introduction of the "broken" tulip allowing unique color variations, such as those above, which had never been seen before.

The government attempted to step in & halt the crash by offering to honor contracts at 10% of the face value, but then the market plunged even lower, making governmental restitution impossible. Few emerged unscathed from the crash. Even the people who had locked in their profit by getting out early suffered during the depression which followed.

Hendrik Gerritsz Pot painted this allegory of Flora’s Wagon of Fools around 1640. This painting shows a cartload of tulip-obsessed elites leading the common workers into the sea. During the time when tulip bulbs were treated like a form of currency, much like the years of the California gold rush, people abandoned jobs, businesses, wives, and homes to become tulip growers.

The 1637 event was popularized in 1841, by the book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, written by British journalist Charles Mackay. According to Mackay, at one point 12 acres (5 ha) of land were offered for a Semper Augustus bulb. Mackay claimed that many tulip investors were ruined by the fall in prices & that Dutch commerce suffered a severe shock. Although Mackay's book is a classic reprinted today, his account is contested because of his lack of primary sources.

In “Flora’s Fool’s Cap,” a cartoon etched in 1637 by Pieter Nolpe, merchants gather inside a giant fool’s cap to compare and trade bulbs. A satire on Tulipmania, people who had invested in tulip bulbs and failed to realise their mistake; in the centre a tent in the shape of a fool's cap, background right, the figure of Flora departing on a donkey, foreground right, peasants joyfully bending over a basket with a crop of tulips and tulip bulbs, foreground left, peasants carrying tulips and transporting earth, bulbs and tulips in a wheel-barrow, background left, figure of a devil brandishing a rod with fool's cap and paper bonds.

Dutch Tulip Traders

The Tulip Trade Unknown artist of the Dutch school, about 1640