parrot tulip



Images via Pinterest 

The parrot Tulip. 

Although tulips are often associated with the Netherlands, they are not a native Dutch flower.  About four hundred years ago Europeans first discovered tulips in Turkey.  At that time Carolus Clusius, a famous botanist, introduced the plant to the Leiden botanical gardens in Holland.  Since tulips were extremely rare, and expensive, only Kings and Emperors could afford to plant them in their gardens.

The immediate popularity of the tulip drove Clusius and other horticulturalists to produce new colour variations to satisfy the growing demand for the flowers.  Over the years, many tulip forms were produced by crossing and hybridizing techniques.  Some had frilly petals, and dramatic flame-like colourations, that later became known as “Parrot tulips”. 




The last three images via this link 
Also for more information. 









the flower engineer




Andreas Verheijen is a certified Master Florist. Born and raised in Zundert, the Dutch epicentre for Dahlia-culture and famous for its flower parade, a career in botany was inevitable. After having lived in Great Britain for 16 years where he worked as floral sales executive for Harrods’ floral department in London, as well as having had his own flower shop, he returned to The Netherlands. Nowadays he works as a freelance floral designer for e.g. the Dutch Flower Council, but still also works regularly in Great Britain on various events and exhibitions. 

For more information about this wonderful engineer visit his website.
And for more beautiful photos visit the Cool Hunter









james mcgrath




Images via here
Art by James McGrath
Collection: Dutchman's Dream-folds 

The moment I saw these images I loved them. 
The shades, the flow, the history connected with modern techniques. 
And of course the hint of flowers in each piece. 
Simple gorgeous. 


From the website

"Art is an illusion, a facsimile, a representation of a heightened reality. Artists of the 16th and 17th centuries mastered these illusions of reality as no other artists in Western history. With the advent of modernism (modernism or post modernism?) at the start of the twentieth century artists began to challenge what we knew to be true. James McGrath is one of these artists who combines contemporary printing and digital techniques with 16th and 17th century historical and artistic traditions.

To create these works on canvas and Plexiglas McGrath uses familiar artists’ tools such as drapery and folding, color and perspective. But it is McGrath’s use of drapery that is exceptionally innovative and dramatic. Artists in the past in both stone and paint have always created illusions of cloth or rich fabric that were supposed to and did startle the eye by their sensual reality. McGrath takes this notion one step further. “I think of drapery as alive or malleable as the human figure,” he says. “I believe drapery can be fragmented or abstracted in the same way as what Picasso through cubism did to the human figure.” The reason this can be done is due to the idea that fabric can be seen as the second skin, so it can be fragmented or abstracted in the same manner as flesh. It is this philosophy that gives the works their very contemporary presence as well their connection to art history. And that is another aspect of the works that is quite 17th century (reminiscent of the 17th century etc). Baroque artists made a fetish of teasing the eye of the beholder, tricking the viewer into imagining that space was where it was not, that something was falling when it was still, that paint was
flesh. McGrath’s works deliciously play on optic tricks, as well as recalling the glories of Dutch landscape painting"



one of those days





Images all via {this is glamorous}

It is one of those days that I would so enjoy just relaxing with a magazine on a lazy day-bed surrounded by flowers, sunshine and a light breeze. 


"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, And that enables you to laugh at life's realities"

-Dr. Seuss-



hello monday


"Look to this day! 
For it is life, the very life of life.
 For yesterday is but a dream 
And tomorrow is only a vision 
But today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
 And tomorrow a vision of hope. 
Look well, therefore, to this day! 
Such is the salutation of the dawn."
-Kalidasa-

Have a wonderful week.
Smile loads.
xx
Pris


coffee lovely




Images via various sources

For those of you who enjoy a delicious cup of coffee in the morning, here is a wonderful little piece of history.

"Coffee was first discovered in Eastern Africa in an area we know today as Ethiopia. A popular legend refers to a goat herder by the name of Kaldi, who observed his goats acting unusually frisky after eating berries from a bush. Curious about this phenomena, Kaldi tried eating the berries himself. He found that these berries gave him a renewed energy. The news of this energy laden fruit quickly spread throughout the region.
Monks hearing about this amazing fruit, dried the berries so that they could be transported to distant monasteries. They reconstituted these berries in water, ate the fruit, and drank the liquid to provide stimulation for a more awakened time for prayer.

Coffee berries were transported from Ethiopia to the Arabian peninsula, and were first cultivated in what today is the country of Yemen.From there, coffee traveled to Turkey where coffee beans were roasted for the first time over open fires. The roasted beans were crushed, and then boiled in water, creating a crude version of the beverage we enjoy today. (Ahh so tulips and the way we enjoy coffee come from Turkey...don't you just love these people)

Coffee first arrived on the European continent by means of Venetian trade merchants. Once in Europe this new beverage fell under harsh criticism from the Catholic church. Many felt the pope should ban coffee, calling it the drink of the devil. To their surprise, the pope, already a coffee drinker, blessed coffee declaring it a truly Christian beverage. (my goodness....imagine if they had succeeded....no coffee....)

Coffee houses spread quickly across Europe becoming centers for intellectual exchange. Many great minds of Europe used this beverage, and forum, as a springboard to heightened thought and creativity.

In the 1700's, coffee found its way to the Americas by means of a French infantry captain who nurtured one small plant on its long journey across the Atlantic. This one plant, transplanted to the Caribbean Island of Martinique, became the predecessor of over 19 million trees on the island within 50 years. It was from this humble beginning that the coffee plant found its way to the rest of the tropical regions of South and Central America"

For more information visit this site