Jo'Burg Days: Tulipmania
Barbara Durlacher tells us of Tulipmania, a mad demand for rare plants which “infected’’ the wealthy citizens of Holland in the 17th Century. A flourishing brewery in France was exchanged for a single tulip bulb.
Who has heard of Tulipmania, the strange disease that hit Holland in the 17th Century? It originated with the arrival of the first tulip bulbs from Turkey and Asia Minor when returning travellers brought back the flowers. Rich merchants, burgers and citizens who had never seen this exotic plant before were captivated, and soon the cultivation and propagation of the bulbs became a full-time industry.
Some time later the first flame tulips appeared. Flame was the name given to tulips that had a variegated pattern in a different colour appearing up the central vein of each petal, and were highly prized and much sort after. However, growers did not know what produced these variations and it was hit-and-miss as to whether a bulb would produce the rare characteristic, or not at all.
Growers tried everything to increase the number of flame tulips in cultivation, nicking the bulbs, pouring boiling water over them, leaving them to dry out in the sun, even soaking them in expensive wine or spirits. Nothing worked, and therefore when a new flame variety appeared, it commanded huge prices and rich men were prepared to pay fortunes to own one, outbidding each other in a race to obtain a unique specimen.
The craze reached such proportions that a single bulb was considered sufficient for a bride’s dowry and a flourishing brewery in France was exchanged for a bulb of a particular variety. A beautiful gabled townhouse on one of Amsterdam’s lovely town squares was traded by a rich burger for one flower stem. Rich men lost fortunes buying these unpredictable corms, in many cases without the bulbs leaving the ground or the flowers being seen by the buyer. There was no guarantee that the future flower would remain true to the parent plant, as at that time no one knew what caused the colour aberrations.
In the paintings of the Dutch Old Masters, tulips form the central subject of nearly every still life, and are often featured as important accessories in the pictures. Rich merchants and burgers wanting a permanent record of themselves and their families also wanted it shown that they were the proud owners of these exclusive and enormously expensive flowers. The artist was invariably instructed to include them in the paintings. The skill and care exercised by the artists, where even the veins in a bee’s wing were depicted, ensured his popularity and continued employment. Patience, a sense of scale, good eyesight and the ability to take infinite care were needed to paint the tulip flowers in all their beauty, to show them to the satisfaction of the wealthy owner, and enhance the background of wealth and power in the pictures.
Special vases were manufactured by the porcelain factories in Delft, designed to show off the beautiful blooms to their best advantage. The base of the vases was a covered bowl with a number of holes around the rim, each of which could contain a single stalk. A pierced column in the centre conducted extra stems to the water in the base. To modern eyes, these bowls look clumsy and graceless, the Delft designs too busy in contrast with the patterned blooms, but they must have been popular with the growers and owners, as there are hundreds in private homes and museum collections.
Many thousands of Rijksdollars were spent in purchasing the bulbs, and men went bankrupt trying to acquire them. The craze became a national scandal, and soon threatened the economy of the Netherlands. Then, only six years after it started, it was over. Like the South Sea Bubble, the Tulipmania craze suddenly disappeared, and many was the man left with only the ruins of his formerly huge fortune, bitterly regretting his unwise speculation.
The factor causing the markings was discovered to be a disease carried by aphids. Eliminate the aphids, and the bulbs remained true to type; allow the insects to flourish and the bulbs were infected. Control this, and it became possible to reproduce these exclusive patterns, and their rarity value disappeared. Such is the fickleness of fashion. Unfortunately most of the early named varieties of the flame tulips have now been lost, and the only tangible reminders of the craze are found in botanical illustrations and paintings.
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(With acknowledgements to Encyclopaedia Britannica and the BBC Discovery program “Tulipmania”)
