Tulipmania Quotes

“high. If we compare them to contemporary commodity prices on the Amsterdam exchange, we find that for the fi,ooo one might pay in January 1637 for one hypothetical Admirael van der Eyck bulb, one could have bought 4,651 pounds of figs, or 3,448 pounds of almonds, or 5,633 pounds of raisins, or 370 pounds of cinnamon, or in tuns of Bordeaux. On a more everyday level for most Dutch people, fi,ooo would buy a modest house in Haarlem, or, if we look at consumables,11,587 kilos of rye bread, or 13.4 vats of butter, or 5,714 pounds of meat. Although we know little about wages in this period, we can establish the income of craftsmen and laborers to place against these figures. For the first half of the century, the figures were fairly static: a master carpenter in Alkmaar at this time made a little more than a guilder a day (24 stuivers), meaning that a tulip costing fi,ooo would cost him nearly three years' wages. This amount would have the purchasing power of €9,395.36, or around $12,000, in today's money.”
― Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age

“Bartholomeus van Rijn, thirty-six, had bought a Coornhart and a Blijenburger from Double in the "dry bulb time" between flowering and replanting of the bulbs in the early autumn.”
― Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age

“That was the experience of the baker Jeuriaen Jansz, whom we have already encountered. In late May or early June 1636 he bought the offset of an Admirael Lieffkens-a flower that happened to be standing in the garden of Marten Kretser in Amsterdam-from the shopkeeper Heinrick Bartelsz.”
― Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age

“Michiel Kistgens and Jan de Haes, brothers-in-law (and Mennonites), are one example of this dynamic. Among the numbers of Amsterdam merchants whom the Haarlemmer Hans Baert was chasing for payment in June 1637 were Kistgens and De Haes. On January 18 the pair had bought for f 1,25o an Admirael van der Eyck bulb weighing 18o asen. The bulb was at that moment growing in the garden of Jan Woutersz in Haarlem, and, like so many, they seem to have been reluctant to pay for their purchase.”
― Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age

“Geertruyt Schoudt was not the first person Hendrick Jan Wynants had sold to that day. He offered her the Switsers at a discount: she could have them for 50 guilders less than he had sold similar ones to "doctor Plas"- Gregorius van der Plas, the city doctor-that is, for A400 instead of Plas' fl,45o. But Schoudt was not buying.”
― Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age

“During the dinner, Pieter Wynants' cousin Hendrick Jan several times suggested to Geertruyt Schoudt that she might like to buy a pound of tulip bulbs. These were Switsers, which, along with Coornharts, were the most popular sort of bulbs in late 1636 and 1637. Switsers, which were red and yellow striped flowers named after Swiss mercenary soldiers and celebrated by various poets, including Andrew Marvell, would have been in bulb form at the beginning of February and, for their own good health, buried in someone's garden. Schoudt would have to take the bulbs on trust, although as she was through various ties closely bound to the Wynants family, this was perhaps not such a problem.”
― Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age

“Admirael de Mans that were of sufficient quality. Seys, at the center of a variety of tulip deals, knew what a good Admirael de Man looked like. It was likewise an excuse for Susanna Sprangers (sister of the important Amsterdam art collector Gommer Spranger), when trying to extricate herself from a bad deal with Lambert Massa (buyer of art at auction, connected with various art dealers, and brother of an important Muscovy merchant who was painted by Hals), that she knew nothing about tulips: "having no knowledge of the flowers nor knowing the worth of them....”
― Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age

“double white Narcissus,”
― Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age

“One French tulip was called a Coquille marbr e, a marbled shell.”
― Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age

“When the Sieur de la Chesnee Monstereul made a list of tulip names in 1654, he included fifty-five of the Agate class alone, and in the Netherlands we find, in various tulip books, names such as Agaat Bisschop, Agaat Fenis da Costa, and Agaat van Enckhuysen. Other French tulips were marbr es or jaspees, and in the Netherlands names like Ghemarmerde [marbled] de Goyer, Ghemarmerde van der Eyck, Ghemarmerde van Willem Willemsz, and so on, were usual. Tulips were not a collector's item simply because they were expensive but because they were part of the same aesthetic universe as shells and many other items so prized in early modern collections. Tulips, like shells, could be stone.”
― Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age

“L'Amoral took the time not only to discuss the flower with him, but to show him others, such as a pan porcin, "white as snow," which had been sent to him from Italy, and a very beautiful double heparica of a "celestial blue.”
― Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age

“De Maes went to see him and learned that L'Amoral himself was planning to write to Clusius, to send him a bulb of the martagon pomponii”
― Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age

“De Maes was excited to report, had "many rarities, among others the double-flowered jonquil,”
― Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age

“If we trace these stories back through the centuries, we find how weak their foundations actually are. In fact, they are based on one or two contemporary pieces of propaganda and a prodigious amount of plagiarism. From there we have our modern story of tulipmania.”
― Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age

“Tulips, we are told, were the center of life for the bloemisten, as those who grew and traded in tulips were sometimes known.”
― Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age

“that is a Gouda.”
― Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age

“The appropriate behavior for dignified gentlemen pursuing a learned pastime within the context of a humanistic community was to exchange willingly; gifts, not sales, were the means of prosecuting these interlocking personal and intellectual relationships. But exchange, and friendship too, becomes more strained when the objects in question are not mere tokens, but expensive and coveted.”
― Anne Goldgar, Tulipmania: Money, Honor, and Knowledge in the Dutch Golden Age