By Ines Keane
A hyacinth vase has an odd shape: a cup on top, a narrow neck and a wide body below. The odd shape has a purpose, and by the time the bulb flowers you can see what it is.
How it works
The Cooper Hewitt design museum describes a glass vessel with a thin, tapering neck and a wide body, often called a hyacinth vase. The vase is filled with enough water that the bulb, set on top, just touches the surface without being submerged. As the flower grows, long white roots fill the bottom of the vase.
Other sources word the water level a little differently. Van Engelen, a bulb merchant, says to fill the glass with room-temperature water to just under the bulb’s basal plate, without touching it, so the bulb sits slightly above the water and the roots grow down into it. Old House Gardens, a bulb seller, says to set the bulb just above, but not touching, the water. Cooper Hewitt says it “just touches”. Two sellers and a museum, and they split on touching or not. We show all three and do not choose.
The dark period
Forcing a bulb for winter flowers starts in autumn. Bulb merchants publish their own schedules, and they vary, so follow the grower’s instructions that come with the bulb.
JSTOR Daily, a magazine, adds two points. Glass lets you watch the flower stalk and the roots. And a forced bulb can be forced only once; put back in the garden, it is unlikely to flower again for several years.
A short history
When people began forcing bulbs on glasses is not known exactly. Kennemerend, a Dutch maker of hyacinth vases, says “about 1700, or perhaps even earlier”. Its history page gives these records:
- 1731 or 1731–32: a German publication, Der neu-angekommene Holländische Gärtner, included a drawing of hyacinths forced on glasses and said the practice was common among the Dutch but only recently known in Germany. In the same period the Swedish scientist Martin Triewald published, in Philosophical Transactions, what the page calls the earliest publication with pictures of bulbs on vases that it has found.
- 1750: a German writer published experiments on forcing hyacinths on water in winter.
- 1752: Haarlem grower George Voorhelm published a drawing of a double hyacinth forced on glass in Traité sur la Jacinthe, for French customers.
Cooper Hewitt says Europeans began forcing hyacinth bulbs in vases in the seventeenth century, with the Dutch as forerunners. That is earlier than Kennemerend’s “about 1700”. The two pages differ by decades and we leave it there.
Cooper Hewitt also reports a 1768 book listing nearly two thousand named varieties in Haarlem. JSTOR Daily says varieties began to be cultivated in earnest in Haarlem by the 1680s, which sits comfortably with that.
Where the flower came from
JSTOR Daily says the garden hyacinth is native to the eastern Mediterranean and was moved from the Ottoman Empire to Europe between the 1550s and the 1610s, through merchants in Istanbul. It dates a double-flowered hyacinth gaining notice in Bavaria to 1612.
Cooper Hewitt says hyacinths were introduced to England from the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa in the early eighteenth century. That is a different origin from JSTOR Daily’s. We set them side by side. The pages may be describing different species or times, but neither says so.
The court
JSTOR Daily says that in the mid-1740s Madame de Pompadour popularised forcing bulbs indoors at the French court, and that she likely first ordered the Sèvres porcelain manufacturer to make bulb pots for forcing. The “likely” is the page’s own.
Who could afford it
Kennemerend says that before the twentieth century hyacinths were expensive and grown mainly for the court and wealthy households, and that in the twentieth century lower prices for bulbs and vases let the public force them at home. It says they stayed very popular until the end of the century. Then indoor forcing declined, it says, because of ready-to-flower potted hyacinths, a lack of cool rooms in homes and wider imports of flowers and plants. Interest has since returned.
Our reading: a vase made for a cool, dark room belongs to a house that has one. The page gives the reasons, and the sentence is only a summary of them.
Old vases
Van Engelen says most antique hyacinth vases were made in western Europe, in England, Holland, Germany and France, and in Scandinavia, and that Victorian-era vases were hand-blown from 1837 to 1901. Kennemerend says the oldest vase in its collection is free-blown glass with a very high pontilled bottom, probably Dutch, from the late 1700s. It adds that there are thousands of types, in all shapes and colours. Cooper Hewitt describes clear, uncut glass. None of the three names a factory or maker.
Dates in order
- 1680s: Haarlem begins to cultivate varieties in earnest, according to JSTOR Daily.
- About 1700: forcing on glasses, “or perhaps even earlier”, according to Kennemerend.
- 1731: the German drawing, according to Kennemerend.
- Mid-1740s: the court fashion, according to JSTOR Daily.
- 1752: Voorhelm’s drawing, according to Kennemerend.
- 1768: the book with nearly two thousand varieties, according to Cooper Hewitt.
Questions a buyer would ask
Does the bulb sit in the water? Sources differ: touching, just above, or just under the base of the bulb. Can I plant it out afterwards? JSTOR Daily says it is unlikely to flower again for several years.
What we left out
We left out prices and gilder sums, the 2021 bulb-shortage coverage, the English glass export ban, variety names and Kennemerend’s other bulbs.
Quick answers
How does a hyacinth glass work? According to Cooper Hewitt, the bulb sits on top of a water-filled vase so that it just touches the surface, and white roots fill the vase as it grows.
How long does it take for a hyacinth to flower in water? It depends on the bulb and the grower. Follow the instructions that come with the bulb.
Can you reuse a forced hyacinth bulb? JSTOR Daily says a forced bulb can be forced only once, and if planted out is unlikely to flower again for several years.
Related on this site: deventer-hanseatic-town-koek-dickens, miffy-nijntje-dick-bruna-rabbit, poffertjes-pan-batter-abbey-story
Roam first. Shop later.