The Tulip Book of P. Cos

In the entire world, 43 tulip books are known to exist. They are all manuscripts, made by different illustrators, and therefore unique

Of these books, 34 were made in the Netherlands during the first half of the seventeenth century. This period saw a rapid development of the range of cultivated tulip varieties. 'Broken' tulips, showing a flame pattern, were all the rage. We now know that these patterns were the result of a viral infection. Speculation rose in the year 1637 to an extent that bulbs were sold faster than they could grow.

Prices spiraled to a ridiculous level for bulbs of which neither buyer nor seller had seen the flower. This tulipomania got out of hand so badly that bulb growers themselves asked the government to ban the trade.

The Special Collections of Wageningen UR Library has one of the rarest of these tulip books. The tulip book of nurseryman P. Cos of Haarlem is a manuscript nursery catalogue of tulips and a small number of other flowers, published in 1637. In comparison with other tulip books, this one is special because not only their names are mentioned, but also their weight and the price for which each bulb was sold. The most expensive one, the Viseroij, was sold for Dfl 3,000 and Dfl 4,200. Fifteen or twenty times a year salary of a schooled craftsman then. Compaired with the inflation within the real estate market over more than 3,5 centuries that would be about 3 to 4 million dollar in US dollars of today. And that in those days! For these prices at the height of the tulipomania you could buy a nice estate along the canals of Amsterdam or, at the end, be ruined for the rest of your life.

  thanks to dublog