A Partial History of The Tulip

 I seem to be buying tulips almost every week.  I do love them and they appear to be increasingly ubiquitous and incredibly varied.  This has aroused in me a certain curiosity about their back story, their history, and in researching that story, I have uncovered a veritable flower garden of delightful tulip information. This is a partial history because the full history I suspect, would fill at least one book!

Fields of tulips in Lisse, Netherlands

Tulips were originally found, growing wild, in the landscape stretching from Southern Europe to Central Asia, and thus, in their natural state, they were at home on steppes and in mountainous areas in temperate climates. But, since the seventeenth century, they have become widely naturalized and cultivated.  Flowering in the Spring, they become dormant in the summer once the flowers and leaves have died back, emerging above ground as a shoot from the underground bulb in early Spring.

Semper Augustus
antique drawing.
See below.

The Persian and Turkish peoples were the first to cultivate tulips, as early as in tenth century Persia, and tulips were certainly growing in Iranian gardens by the tenth century while, by the fifteenth century, they were among the most prized of flowers, becoming the national symbol of the later Ottomans. Although tulips were cultivated in Byzantine Constantinople as early as 1055, they did not come to the attention of Northern Europeans until the sixteenth century when diplomats to the Ottoman court observed,and reported on, them. Although it is unknown who first brought the tulip to North-western Europe, the most widely accepted story is that it was Oghier Ghislain de Busbecq,  an ambassador for Emperor Ferdinand 1 to Suleyman the Magnificent.  According to a letter, he saw "an abundance of flowers everywhere; Narcissus, hyacinths, and those in Turkish called Lale, much to our astonishment because it was almost midwinter, a season unfriendly to flowers."  

Keukenhof Gardens

The Persian poet Omar Khayam’s 11th-century poetry frequently featured the tulip as a symbol of ideal feminine beauty. However, in 1559, there is an account by Conrad Gessner describes tulips flowering in Augsburg, Swabia in the garden of Councillor Heinrich Herwart. They were rapidly introduced to Northern Europe helping to create the eventual absurdity of an investment bubble, a speculative frenzy, during what has become known as the Dutch Tulip Mania of 1634-1637 and this led to the invention of the ceramic tulipiere,  devised for the display of cut flowers, stem by stem. (illustration below). Vases and bouquets including tulips often appeared in Dutch still life painting during the Dutch Golden Age, becoming strongly associated with the Netherlands, the major producer of tulips for world markets ever since.. To this day, tulips are strongly associated with the Netherlands and the cultivated varieties are often called Dutch tulips with the Keukenhof Gardens boasting the world’s largest permanent display of tulips. 

Loudon's Hortus Botanicus
Catalogue of all plants indigenous,
cultivated in, or introduced to Britain.

Carolus Clusius is largely responsible for the spread of tulip bulbs in the final years of the 16th century; he planted tulips at the Vienna Imperial Botanical Gardens in 1573. He finished the first major planting of tulips in 1592 and made extensive notes of the colour variations. After he was appointed the Director of the Leiden University’s newly established Hortus Botanicus, he planted both a teaching garden and his private garden with tulips in late 1593. Thus, 1594 is considered the date of the tulip's first flowering in the Netherlands, despite reports of the cultivation of tulips in private gardens in Antwerp and Amsterdam two or three decades earlier. These tulip plants at Leiden would eventually contribute to both the Tulip Mania and to the establishment of the tulip industry in the Netherlands. During the time of Tulip Mania, a viral infection of tulip bulbs had the happy side effect of creating variegated patterns in tulip flowers which were much admired, valued and propogated.  Tulip specimens of the variegated type currently available, are part of the group known as Rembrandts, so named because Rembrandt painted some of the most flamboyant blooms of his time.

Tulips spread rapidly across Europe during the sixteenth century, and more opulent varieties such as double tulips, were already known in Europe by the early 17th century. These curiosities fitted well in an age when natural oddities in many fields, were cherished especially in the Netherlands, France, Germany and England, where the spice trade with the East Indies had made many people wealthy. Nouveaux riches seeking status through wealthy tulip displays, embraced the exotic plant market, especially in the Low Countries where gardens had become expensively fashionable. 

Srinagar Tulip Gardens in Pakistan;
Asia's largest display of tulips.

The craze for tulip bulbs soon grew in France, where in the early 17th century, entire properties were exchanged as payment for a single tulip bulb. Tulip bulbs had become so expensive that they were treated as a form of currency, or rather, as futures, forcing the Dutch government to introduce trading restrictions on the bulbs. The value of the flower gave it an aura of mystique, and numerous publications describing varieties in lavish garden manuals were published, cashing in on the value of the flower. An export business was built up in France, which became an important European tulip hub supplying Dutch, Flemish, German and English buyers.

 Iran.

The word for tulip in Persian is ‘laleh’ and this has become popular as a girl’s name and is also used to name commercial enterprises such as the Laleh International Hotel and in public facilities such as Laleh Park and Laleh Hospital. 

Persian tulip fields.

The celebration of the Persian New Year, or Nowruz, dating back over 3,000 years, marks the advent of Spring and tulips are used as a decorative feature during these festivities. The twelfth century Persian tragic romance, Khosrow and Shirin, similar to the story of Romeo and Juliet, tells of tulips sprouting where the blood of the young prince Farhad had spilt after he had killed himself upon hearing that his true love had died; a false story, discovered too late. The tulip was also a topic for Persian poets from the 13^th century and one famous poem, Gulistan, by Musharrifu’d-din Saadi, described a visionary garden paradise: “The murmur of a cool stream/bird song, ripe fruit in plenty/bright multicoloured tulips and fragrant roses …..”

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khameni

In addition, the tulip is the national symbol for martyrdom in Iran and in Shi’ite Islam generally and has been widely depicted on coins and postage stamps. It was a common symbol during the1979 Islamic Revolution, and a red tulip adorns the national Iranian flag redesigned in 1980. The sword in the centre, with four crescent-shaped petals around it, create the word ‘Allah’ as well as symbolising the five pillars of Islam. The tomb of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khameini is decorated with 72 stained glass tulips, representing the 72 martyrs who died at the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE, and the ubiquitous tulip is also used as a symbol on billboards celebrating casualties of the 1980-1988 war with Iraq. The tulip also became a symbol of protest against the Iranian Govt. after the Presidential election in June 2009 when millions turned out on the streets to protest the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. These legitimate protests were harshly suppressed and subsequently the Iranian Green Movement adopted the tulip as a symbol of their struggle. 

Iranian flag.
The current flag was adopted in 1979 when the Shah was overthrown.
The stylised Arabic inscription, 'Allahu akbar' [God is great]is repeated
22 times in honour of the date of the !(79 revolution.
The words 'Allahu akbar' are used by the muezzin to call faithful Muslims
to prayer five times a day. They are also an Islamic battle cry.

Ottowa Tulip Festival

  Introduction to Canada.

During WW2, from 1941-1943, Seymour Cobley of the Royal Horticultural Society, donated 83,000 tulip bulbs to Canada to honour Canadian involvement in the war. In 1945, the Dutch Royal Family sent 100,000 bulbs to Ottawa in gratitude for Canadians having sheltered the future Queen Juliana and her family for the preceding three years during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. In 1946 Juliana sent another 20,500 bulbs for a hospital display with a promise to send 10,000 more tulip bulbs each year. These generous tulip donations triggered the establishment of the Ottowa Tulip Festival which, by 1963, featured the inclusion of more than 2 million tulips, rising to nearly 3 million by 1995.

                                                             Addendum.

Semper Augustus tulip

 The Semper Augustus tulip could lay claim to a certain fame during the early seventeenth century. The beginning of the Dutch Golden Age saw unprecedented levels of prosperity through trade, and with strong disposable incomes, merchants and other nouveaux riches, in particular, sought ways to display their wealth but strictly within the Protestant value of modesty. Tulips, relatively recent arrivals, were much sought after for their novelty and beauty with the added charm for the elite, that the rarest, were expensive. The discreet Semper Augustus with its small scale flamboyance in petals and its high cost, presented a perfect but discreet example.  

Vintage tulipiere vase. 
One of many designed specifically for
exhibiting tulips to advantage.

  

 

   

 

. …

 

 

 

Cambridge Days

 

 Cambridge Backs

A weekend in Cambridge for the Literary Festival [ 22-26 April] sounds intellectually ideal, and it was!  But beyond the intellectual, there were the College gardens and the riverbanks full of daffodils and;

narcissi; indeed, all was picturesque along the River Cam and the Backs to welcome Cait, Niamh and me as we arrived  on a perfect Saturday morning to catch the first talk which promised us enlightenment on The World in A Phrase, being A Brief History of the Aphorism. James Geary, the speaker and author, gave us a quick tour through an impressive list of practioners, in

James Geary: writer, professor, aphorism-collector.

 learned, while entertaining, style, his

impact undoubtedly helped by his own attractive appearance, so welcome to the shallower students present. I am presently reading his book which echoes his talk both of which celebrate the delight of the short, witty and philosophical phrases which are indeed aphorisms. Geary’s book is virtually an entertaining tour through the wisest and wittiest sayings over the centuries, exploring the history of aphorisms from ancient China to contemporary ‘clever practice’ featuring brief biographies of some of the greatest practitioners including ancient sages like Lao-tzu and the Buddha, philosophers like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, writers like George Eliot and Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach; humorists like Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker; activists like James Baldwin and Audre Lorde; poets like Langston Hughes and Kay Ryan and artists like Jenny Holzer and David Byrne. The book, like the talk, is for lovers of words and seekers of wisdom and Geary manages to explore the aphorism in what amounts                                                                             to a love letter-cum-memoir disguised as a reference                                                                                   book. Fellow aphorists, one might say, fellow fanatics,                                                                               will love his script. 

Gary Stevenson; Ex-Citibank trader turned
inequality activist.

It was a disappointment to learn that the Sunday Room of One’s Own Lecture by Deborah Levy had had, perforce, to be cancelled due to illness though will be delivered at the Winter Festival [Nov 22-26] But we gratefully caught the excellent New Statesman debate that ‘This house believes that Britain’s best days are behind it.’ The basis of the debate was the assertion that there is a widespread mood of public despair at how difficult life has begun and these hard times are seen, not in terms of politically left and right, but through the prism of optimism and pessimism. Among the six first-class debaters was Gary Stevenson, a British You-Tuber, author, economist and former financial trader and we will look at him as he was previously unknown to me, no doubt betraying my limited inner landscape, and he did look interesting! He mentioned en passant, that he was independently wealthy [a self-made millionaire by 21] though frankly through my eyes of relative innocence, he resembled a potentially menacing graduate of a rough inner-city neighbourhood who could ‘take care of himself’ and was signalling that the passer-by should keep his distance. Presumably the ‘independently wealthy’ referred to his own effective financial trading and not to aristocratic parents; indeed, his parents were Mormon.working class AND it was encouraging to read that he was/is an activist against economic equality. I quietly urged my daughter, a college lecturer in Social Sciences to try to get him to give a talk to her students [16-18]. Gary would go down a storm with that age group both for his incipiently threatening appearance and his barely controlled subversive language. He could also quietly let them know he had been expelled at 16 for ‘drug-related transgressions’ and thus win even more plaudits. 

Ancient sage, Lao-Tzu.

 

 

Punting on the River Cam.

October 1844-August 1900.
Fanous philosopher,
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche.

Garden Trail

One view of my sunny Wye garden.

I have recently seen some of the David Attenborough’s T.V. series on Gardens and it has brought on a little rush of some of my own garden memories, beginning with the very first garden I had on the so-called ‘sidepiece’; the empty strip of green, grassy space adjacent to our long narrow back garden in Nottinghamshire which my mother worked to hard to beautify and where her huge admiration for dahlias really took hold. The appeal of my own first garden did not last, perhaps when it dawned on me that having a garden did not simply signify transient beauty and satisfaction;  it meant hard work on an activity which was never completed!

A wonderful acer in my little garden in Wye, Kent

Cherry Star. A recent newcomer to the word
of dahlias. This would have caused limitless joy
for my mother.

After watching my mother’s enthusiastic gardening, I did eventually realise that she must have had the proverbial ‘green fingers’ lacked by me. but inherited by my youngest sister. Mum took the hard work in her stride and adored her garden which brought immense pleasure to a toilsome life of relatively few pleasures. She could only rarely afford to buy plants and in that, she was typical of many working-class women who instinctively took to beautifying their surroundings but with little more than enthusiasm and perhaps the remembered gardens of their parents, usually produced by their fathers who seemed to have been keen on growing chrysanthemums and potatoes. My Mum was just not interested in growing salad or vegetables; mystifying considering our poverty and baffling from the current perspective that freshly grown salads and veg are considered ‘a good thing’ for health. What she had, or rather, what our rented semi had, was a very long, quite narrow, stretch of land behind the house, bordered on the left by a small wood, and with a parallel stretch of land on the other side, belonging to the old lady next door whose family seemed to ignore their patch. As a result, the garden next-door was a low-level shambles cowering behind a privet

Cafe au lait collection.
A dahlia armful which would have produced
maternal delight!

 hedge, so no competitive element ever entered the equation. 

What remained in Mum's mind’s eye was a picture of the remembered girlhood garden produced by her miner father’s passion for gardening. Apparently, in addition to producing abundant vegetables, he had grown flowers too and his floral garden had been beautiful. I think these memories perhaps unconsciously, had provided a goal for her, for our back garden, and though money was scarce, she could buy, at the right time, reasonably-priced dahlia bulbs from the Co-op grocer, on her weekly order, and somehow, this gave her permission, as it were, to buy dahlia bulbs, and other plants for sale, which might have appeared. I cannot remember if other garden delights were available from the same source, but she had a brisk additional custom of swapping plants and sometimes seeds, with neighbours and friends in what appeared to my childish observation, frequent, almost never-ending botanical traffic which seemed to afford her immense pleasure. I am not now sure where her particular passion for dahlias came from, but they became of real importance to her. Thinking back now, I can see the huge variety available but even more important to my mother, I suspect, was that many varieties of dahlia were not only large and beautifully colourful; they were showy and arresting to the eye and added a flamboyance to the mosaic of pattern and palate of our back garden which ALWAYS, to her quiet satisfaction, elicited appreciative expressions of delight and approval from visitors and neighbours.  Dahlias had impact! And they were easy and cheap to grow while impossible to ignore!  And they continue to wield a similar power with me inasmuch as,when I notice them in a display, I inevitably think of her.

Potted trees in Kent.

My next garden, if that is the right word, was the two acres of ‘grounds’ of a Derbyshire hall which coincided with, or perhaps added to, a period when life seemed to be lived in a state of perpetual, low level frenzy! The thirty years there, initially with Mum’s help when she joined us for around ten years, saw my gardening somehow squeezed into the myriad pile of chores and duties and responsibilities; enjoyed insufficiently it is true, though visually appreciated. I tended the borders diligently, but the grounds of Waingroves Hall in Derbyshire, with very little effort save the perpetual grass-cutting undertaken by a less-than-keen husband, were a long, perpetual delight of shade and light. It was where I occasionally sought the solace of silence among the trees and where a furtive, anonymous fox regularly checked the pond hoping for a careless duck paddling unawares. 

The 'garden' draping the front door of my sister's house
in Bulmer at least ten years ago.
My sister was a Very Keen and Knowledgeable Gardener
who created two enchanting
new gardens from the wilderness.

A move to Kent, alone, for the next thirty years, was when I fell in love with a small, period house, half of a former hall house, with a tiny garden and a brick courtyard, in an historic village, where, for the first time for me, gardening in pots began. I developed a gradually growing tiny expertise in this special botanical branch which proved useful when I moved to an apartment with a lovely terrace in Florence for around 7/8 years. And so now to Bury St Edmunds with a second-floor flat, a baby terrace off the kitchen and long roof terrace off the small study. Needless to say, both terraces feature pots and hanging baskets which adorn my surroundings but which now combine to challenge my fading energy!!

View of a friend's garden in Bruges which I loved.

The much admired Waterperry Gardens near Oxford.
Family lived near these 8 acres of botanical Heaven.

A friend in Firenze in a wild garden.

This has been an interesting, if unexpected, memory trip! Having had these Jardin Jingles sounded out briefly above, I realise that following my life’s garden trail in memory does, in fact, trace the outline of my actual 91+ preceding years.

A fine shot of part of the splendid Abbey Gardens, 
provided for the grateful community in Bury and beyond,
and where I love to wander most days.

Multiple Selves

 

 

A youthful Jan Morris

This blog looks at the life of Catharine Jan Morris, born James Humphry Morris, [2^nd Oct 1926 to 20^th November 2020]. She had an extraordinary life, and her public description as a Welsh historian, author and travel writer, seems somewhat underwhelming! Her best-known work was the Pax Britannica trilogy, a history of the British Empire, published between 1968 and 1978, and her portraits of cities such as Venice, Oxford, Trieste, Hong Kong and New York City, were highly praised. Her Last Letters from Hav was a Booker Prize short-listed novel in 1985. She published under her birth name, James, until 1972 when she had gender reassignment surgery after transitioning from male to female.

An even more youthful James.

As James, he was a member of the 1953 British Mount Everest expedition led by Colonel John Hunt and including Edmund Hillary which achieved the first ever confirmed ascent of the mountain. He was the only journalist to accompany that expedition, impressively climbing with the team to a camp at 22,000 feet where he used a pre-arranged code to send news of their successful ascent. His coded message, “Snow conditions bad stop advanced base abandoned yesterday stop awaiting improvement.” reached The Times by coincidence, on the morning of the coronation of Elizabeth 11. It was quite an achievement to get the news of the 29 May ascent to London by Coronation Day on 2 June as it had to be sent by runner to Namche Bazaar en route! And a further triumph to combine the two disparate events in such eye-catching synchronicity. The global publicity from these two monumental events was enormous and the name of James Morris became famous. Publishers begged him to write more books and when The Times repeatedly refused him permission to do so, he eventually left the paper.

The boy, James, during the Everest triumph, 1953.

Morris was born in Clevedon, Somerset, the youngest of the three children of Walter Henry Morris, (died 1938), an engineer from Monmouth in Wales who never fully recovered from being gassed in WW1. Her mother, nee Enid Payne, was an English church organist who trained as a concert pianist at the Leipzig Conservatoire and became a well-known recitalist in the early days of broadcasting in south Wales and the west of England. Jan Morris’s elder brothers, Gareth and Christopher, both achieved distinction, as a flautist, (Gareth) and as an organist and music publisher for the Oxford University Press, (Christopher). James had been a member of the choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, while boarding at Christ Church Cathedral School then went on to study at Lancing College before returning to Christ Church, Oxford, as an undergraduate, taking a second-class honours BA in 1951 which was promoted to the customary Oxford MA in 1961. While at Lancing, he made a start in Journalism reporting for the Western Daily Press; and during his time at Oxford, contributed to Cherwell, the university student newspaper.

Morris initially, hoped to join the Royal Navy but was prevented because of colour blindness, instead joining a Cavalry regiment during the closing stages of WW2, and being posted to the Free Territory of Trieste in 1945, during the British -American occupation. He eventually went on to serve as a Regimental Intelligence Officer. At 21, he left the army, enrolled on an Arabic course in London, found a reporting job in Cairo and while there proposed marriage to Elizabeth Tuckniss whom he had met in a London boarding house. As they settled into wedded bliss, Morris won a place in Oxford which eventually led to a reporting job with The Times..The editor who signed him up, said, "He is quite out of the run of normal candidates."  and Morris took the opportunity to return to Cairo as the Times correspondent. While there, he became friends with Peregrine Worsthorne who wrote that, " At no point was James ever one of the boys." He wrote for years for The Times which august publication published his original Mount Everest/Coronation Day scoop though he managed to land other journalistic firsts too leading to an impressive career and life. Reporting on the Suez Crisis for the Manchester Guardian in 1956, he produced the first ‘irrefutable proof’ of collusion between France and Israel in the invasion of Egyptian territory, interviewing French Air Force pilots who confirmed that they had been in action in support of Israeli forces. He also reported on the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem and later, publicly opposed the Falklands War.

James with wife, Elisabetth, and young family

But chiefly, it was the personal life of James Morris which aroused public interest. In 1949 he married Elizabeth, daughter of a Ceylon tea planter, Austen Cecil Tuckniss and they had five children, including the poet/musician, Twm Morys; one child died in infancy. Morris's children regarded her/him as an aloof and unhelpful parent and looked back on their upbringing with anger. The family lived in the village of  Llanystumdwy in North Wales for over 50 years until Morris’s death in November 2020. He began transitioning to live as a woman in 1964 and travelled to Morocco in 1972 to undergo gender-affirming surgery performed by Georges Burou when doctors in England refused such treatment unless Morris divorced his wife, [the former Elizabeth Tuckniss] something he refused to do. They did divorce later but remained together and on May 14th 2008 were legally reunited when they formally entered a civil partnership. Jan detailed her transition in Conundrum in 1974, her first book under her other name, Jan Morris. Both feminists and her publishers, were dismayed by Conundrum in which she wrote, "the urge to change sex has been the most compelling instinct of my life" though she added, "it was not important."

Morris died on November 20th, 2020 in Bryn Beryl Hospital in Pwllheli in North Wales at the age of 94, survived by Elizabeth and their four children. Elizabeth died at 99 on June 17th, 2024. After Jan's death, the Guardian opined that she had been an outrageously successful journalist and travel writer, adding that, however, the greatest distance travelled by Jan Morris was not across the Earth's surface, but between extraordinary identities: from being the golden boy newspaper reporter, James, to the 

Jan Morris at 93.

transgender historian and explorer, Jan.  

Awards

Despite being born and chiefly raised in England, Morris always identified as Welsh so that it seems appropriate that she received early honorary doctorates from the University of Wales and the University of Glamorgan. She was also an honorary fellow of Christ Church, Oxford and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She was elected to the Gorsedd Cymru in 1992 and received the Glyndwr Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Arts in Wales in 1996. After some mature consideration, for Morris was a Welsh Nationalist at heart, she accepted her appointment as Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1999 Birthday Honours List for services to literature. In 2005 she was awarded the Golden Pen Award by English Pen, for a "Lifetime's Distinguished Service to Literature." In January 2008, The Times named her the 15th greatest British writer since WW2. She has also featured in the Pinc List of leading Welsh LGBT figures in 2017 and in 2018 won the Edward Stanford Outstanding Contribution to Travel Writing Award. Hers was an extraordinary and fascinating life, well lived! Before she died, she spoke of her 1970s transition and the love of her wife [Elizabeth] which had never wavered. " I was born a man but only achieved serenity as a woman."

James Morris congratulates Edmund Hillary as he returns from his successful attempt to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

From James to Jan.
As a soldier, his fellow officers felt he was "rather better-looking
than any young man is entitled to be." 

 

Blue and White Porcelain

Chinese junk of yesteryear

Qing Republic Five Fish bowl.

 A 14^th century shipwreck, the ‘Temasek Wreck’, was discovered in shallow, but dangerous, waters in the eastern entrance to the Singapore Strait and excavated intermittently between 2016 and 2019. The marine archaeologists who located the site took four years to sift through the remains for, despite the shallowness of the water, there were strong currents and shocking visibility. The ship, probably a Chinese junk of the type widely used in the Middle Ages, had completely vanished in the intervening centuries, but the remains of its cargo of porcelain and stoneware were there in the form of 3.5 tonnes of chiefly shards though some intact examples were also discovered. Stoneware bowls and storage jars formed most of the cargo, but, impressive to see now, is the extensive repertoire of rare Yuan dynasty blue and white porcelain, more than has ever been discovered from a documented wreck before. A record haul indeed. The recovered blue and white weighed approximately 136 kg and comprised over 2350 shards plus a 

Yang Dynasty four gourd bottle.

few intact vessels. Archaeologists concluded that the cargo had included fourteen differently shaped vessels of which the majority had been bowls closely followed by vases and then jars. They also eventually decided that there had been over 300 blue and white bowls of varying sizes on board, and the evidence suggests that the quality of the ceramics was, in many cases, superlative. It is concluded that the junk, loaded in Quanzhou in the mid-fourteenth century, was bound for the thriving duty-free commercial hub of Temasek (early Singapore). Historians suggest that the shipwreck hints at the extent of local consumption and demonstrates the wealth of the settlement. Unlike sites that have accumulated items over time, because the shipment can be dated so closely, it provides a reliable reference for identifying similar Yuan dynasty wares, found elsewhere without a clear archaeological context.

Mandarin ducks in a lotus pool.
Very early bottle, probably 14th century. 

The small number of intact objects enabled archaeologists to identify from the ornate designs, the identity of the intended owner and even the date of the shipwreck. One of the designs featured a four-clawed dragon; another depicted a phoenix surrounded by a band of chrysanthemums. One design recurred frequently; mandarin ducks in a lotus pond and this had been the signature motif of Emperor Wenzong who restricted it to his personal use during his reign from 1328 to 1332. This restriction almost certainly ceased soon after he was deposed though commercial kilns probably continued to produce many more ceramics featuring this motif for some time, intended for export and not the home market. The Imperial kilns were shut down around 20 years later when a peasant rebellion movement, the Red Turbans, arose, which further narrows the period in which the ship could have sunk. Even if some kilns had continued producing ceramics, the Yuan Dynasty nonetheless, fell in 1368 and the first Ming Emperor                                                                                    who followed, banned commercial trade around 1371 

During the time that Yuan porcelain was produced, it became coveted by the wealthy elites across Eurasia, only a little less prized than gold, calligraphy or exemplary architecture, but as ceramics, it had a translucency and hardness which seemed almost miraculous to the cognoscenti.  Professor Shane McCausland of SOAS University of London [School

    Flower vase pattern, 1638.

of Oriental and African Studies] says, “There’s even a belief that Yuan blue and white had magical properties so that if you put poison on it, it would crack……. That partly explains why paranoid rulers did like to have a bit of blue and white around.” Yuan pottery also illustrates the extent of the trade networks which existed at the time. Made by Chinese craftsmen, utilizing cobalt originating in Persia [modern Iran] before being exported along the maritime silk routes dominated by the Mongols. Prof. McCausland suggests that Yuan porcelain represented a major technological breakthrough in Chinese art under Mongol rule. As soon as the Mongols retreated from China in 1368, the knowledge of that breakthrough gradually faded and was eventually lost.  As late as the 1930s, scholars would misidentify blue and white porcelain as produced by other dynasties. It was said, “What could the Mongols have had to do with this? They pillaged, they raped, they destroyed.”  

Blue and white porcelain is the most splendid variety in the history of Chinese ceramics. Its charm lies in the pure white body, vibrant blue colour, (cobalt), various patterns and decorations and exquisite craftsmanship. Those examples that have been passed down as heirlooms through generations, also reflect the social cultures of different eras. Not only has Blue and White become a treasure of traditional Chinese culture, but it also occupies an important position in world art.    

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

  

The Book of Kells

 

The Book of Kells

Lavishly decorated frontispiece of the Book of Kells.

I have just returned from a brief trip with family to Dublin, a city unknown to me, and subsequently, a delight to discover. My view of Dublin was heavily influenced by the quality of the museums which I experienced there and one, EPIC, the Irish Emigration Museum, particularly impressed me. Just being there, meant I was constantly reminded of the charm of the Irish, evident in so many day-to-day transactions and encounters and the EPIC displays recount the Irish narrative in such innovative ways. Obviously, I quickly became aware that my museum-visit practice was seriously outdated; there were no serried ranks of silent display cases and endless, difficult-to-read labels too tiny to bother with. Instead, there was colour and movement; videos and informative voice-overs which rendered my inexperience and hesitation irrelevant!       

My favourite EPIC item was the miraculous Book of Kells, both the sublime creation itself, and the story of its historical journey.  Exploring its timeline is to uncover centuries of artistry, intrigue and

Ornate decorated introduction to the 
Gospel of John.

cultural heritage.  It was created around 800 A.D. in a monastery on the Island of Iona off the Scottish coast. That area, and particularly the monastery, suffered a series of Viking attacks which brought death and destruction to the monks with the attendant fear of the destruction or disappearance of what was the emerging Book of Kells, so the surviving monks took their treasures and fled to Kells, in County Meath in Ireland. The compilation of the nascent Book of Kells, begun in Iona, continued and may have been completed there though there is no written reference to its existence until 1007 in the Annals of Ulster describing it as “the great Gospel of Colum Cille” and recording that the manuscript had previously been stolen, disappearing “after two months and twenty nights.”  Its accidental discovery from burial in the ground was a huge relief even though its binding, and the leaves at the front and back, were missing. In 521or 522, Colum Cille had been born into the ruling dynasty of present- day Donegal. Around 561 he travelled to Dal Riata in Scotland, finally settling in 563 on Iona, a fertile island off Mull. The subsequent community there grew to be the prosperous head of a confederation of monastic houses with Lindisfarne its most prominent foundation.

Symbols of the four Evangelists:
Top left to right:
Matthew, angel; Mark, lion;
eagle, John; ox, Luke.

 There is scant information on the Book after the early eleventh century and it is presumed that this early version continued its peaceful existence in the monastery in Kells. Interesting however, is to consider the original concept which flowered into the beautiful Kells project. Was it conceived as a unitary object originally and did the idea of producing a stunning manuscript continue throughout the upheavals, wars, violence and urgent re-locations? It is concluded by experts that numerous scribes and artists may have worked on the Book at various times, and the current assumption is that there was no apparent co-ordination or overall collaboration between scribes. The current official written guide to The Book of Kells however attributes its identity and status to the fact that it was assembled on Kells by one particular scribe identified as Scribe B. However, the impressive centre narrative of the Book of Kells is John’s Gospel which may well have come complete as now presented, from Iona, perhaps intended to be a single, stand-alone manuscript, as the Irish Church had a particular reverence for John. The manuscript includes a magnificent portrait of John, and the conservative style of the script clearly suggests it is the work of a single scribe, designated A. It seems likely that Scribe B had the assembled core texts before him and then he completed sections, supplied necessary additions and numerous decorative details in an attempt to provide overall coherence.

Chi Rho monogram.
The first two letters of Christ, in Greek.

In 1211 the Book of Kells was brought into the newly-formed diocese of Meath, the monastic church also functioning as the parish church and considered a safe haven vis-à-vis the treasured manuscript, In 1641 there was an Irish rebellion against the Protestant settlers during which upheaval, the town, including the church, of Kells suffered severe damage, the church subsequently fit only for the stabling of horses. The safety of the manuscript being endangered with Cromwell's cavalry quartered in the church nearby, the manuscript was sent to Dublin around 1653 by the Governor of Kells, Charles Lambart, 1^st Earl of Cavan and soon after, Henry Jones, Bishop of Meath, (1661-1682) presented it to Trinity College where it remains today, a treasured archive. Trinity College had been established by Queen Elizabeth 1in 1592 and was thus Ireland's oldest university.

The manuscript was rebound in 1742, and again in early 1826 by George Mullen who received the sum of £22.15 “for repairing Columb Kills manuscript.” Unfortunately, Mullen’s repair was later deplored as ‘vandalism’, especially his trimming of the leaves. In 1895 the manuscript was again rebound, this time by Galwey of Eustace Street, Dublin. The present binding was carried out in 1953 by Roger Powell; he flattened the leaves through careful hydration and tensioning and divided the Book into four volumes, one for each of the Gospels. There are minor additions to the text such as a poem complaining about the taxation of church land, added in the 15th century; copious signatures and annotations added by Gerald Plunkett of Dublin in the 16th century, including  disfiguring transcriptions of texts; and the signatures of Queen Victoria and Albert on the occasion of their visit on 7th August 1849.  The mediaeval Latin of the Book of Kells does not make for easy reading! There are no letters j, v, and k. And spelling is erratic with letters interchanged such as y and I; ae and e; m and n; b and p. Double consonants are common such as double ss where one is needed or double tt similarly.

Madonna and child.
The oldest image of Mary in Western manuscripts.

This blog is a minor introduction to the Book of Kells and the reader should search out the official guide which is packed with full and relevant information and illustration and produced by scholars and artists with long experience of this extraordinary mediaeval manuscript. Begun when almost no ordinary person could read or write but when everyone looked to churches and illustrated religious texts for inspiration, information and artistic beauty, the Book of Kells can boast stunning imagery, vivid colouring and expressive intensity. It is a jewel which inspires as a symbol of continuing Irish historical creativity. Notably, UNESCO has added the Book of Kells to the Memory of the  World International Globally Important historical documents.

 

The Long Room, Trinity College, Dublin.
Final home to the Book of Kells.
The Long Room, opened in 1732,. is a 65 metre-long chamber and
is regarded as one of the most beautiful libraries in the world.
Still in use today as a library

 

Book of Kells on display in the Long Room.