Growing up in Holland, MI, every May the town was absorbed in preparation and celebration of Tulip Time. This annual festival celebrates the Dutch culture of the founding settlers and every year massive fields of tulips bloom and wooden shoes are retrieved from storage. Being neither Dutch nor prone to enjoy historical festivals as a child, I grew up annoyed at the very site of a tulip. But now as an adult, geographically removed from the claustrophobic tourist crowds of Tulip Time, these bulbs now have a soft spot for me as a harbinger of springtime. One of the more interesting anecdotes about tulips and the Dutch was Tulip Mania, a period where tulips, imported from Persia, were so wildly popular that they had economic impact. From wikipedia: Tulip mania (Dutch: tulpenmanie) was a period during the Dutch Golden Age when contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable tulip reached extraordinarily high levels, with the major acceleration starting in 1634 and then dramatically collapsing in February 1637. It is generally considered to have been the first recorded speculative bubble or asset bubble in history. In many ways, the tulip mania was more of a then-unknown socio-economic phenomenon than a significant economic crisis. It had no critical influence on the prosperity of the Dutch Republic, which was one of the world's leading economic and financial powers in the 17th century, with the highest per capita income in the world from about 1600 to about 1720.[4][5][6] The term "tulip mania" is now often used metaphorically to refer to any large economic bubble when asset prices deviate from intrinsic values." That does sound somewhat familiar to something(bitcoin). Born from this mania was a unique vessel to display these valuable blooms, the Dutch Tulip Vase, also called a Pyramid Vase. Tulip vases can be round, square or oval and they are made in different sizes; the big ones have multiple floors and consist of loose stackable sections. At every level of the vase, one can insert flowers into each of the spouts. The big tulip vases were used to decorate the hearth during the summer and the smaller vases would be placed on the table on a festive occasion. Here are a few of my favorites: If you have any interest in acquiring one of your own, Etsy has quite a few options, or you can get one modeled after those in the Rijksmuseum at their gift shop.
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11/17/2022 10:36:27 am
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