#semper augustus

[segmentedleg]

Stilleven met bloemen. Hans Bollongier. 1639. Oil on wood.

[ornithologyorthodoxy]

1/20/22

[slack-wise]

Semper Augustus tulip

[desperate-acts-of-capitalism]

By the way, this is what a Semper Augustus looks like:

[dreamsfullofdragons]

Aw yisssss

[blackdragontavern]

"A speculative bubble built on... nothing but air and a pretty petal."

The most fascinating detail about Tulip Mania is why certain bulbs were so valuable. The solid-colored tulips were cheap. The ones that people bankrupted themselves for—the ones with the vivid, flame-like streaks of color—were actually infected with the "tulip breaking virus."

The very thing that made them beautiful was a disease that weakened the bulb and made it harder to reproduce. They were trading immense wealth for something beautiful, rare, and fundamentally broken. It’s a perfect metaphor for every financial bubble since.

[gremlinpal]

Of all tulip varieties, it was the variegated flowers that most bewitched the Dutch. The contrast in coloring, such as red (Rozen) and purple (Violetten) against a white ground or against yellow (Bizarden), was caused by a virus that beautified but also weakened and eventually killed the bulb. A complete mystery at the time, this mosaic or tulip-breaking virus was conveyed by aphids, which flourished in the fruit trees of seventeenth-century gardens. An infected flower was said to be "broken" and there was no way to determine if or when a flower would break. It was an unpredictable phenomenon that only added to the tulip's allure—and appealed, like the market in spices and porcelains, to a culture of risk taking and the inherent gamble in trading in such rare commodities. (x)

[talesofdrunkennessandcruelty]

The Most Beautiful Tulip in History Cost as Much as a House