BOTANICS. Dirk and Pieter VOORHELM (1705-1783 and ?/?), bota - Lot 10

Lot 10
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BOTANICS. Dirk and Pieter VOORHELM (1705-1783 and ?/?), bota - Lot 10
BOTANICS. Dirk and Pieter VOORHELM (1705-1783 and ?/?), botanists, bulb merchants and growers, and nurserymen in Harleem. Signed letter, in French, addressed to Baron de LA TOUR D'AIGUES (1724-1795). Harleem, August 8, 1748. 1 large folio page. Address on verso of second leaf with two fine red wax seals, preserved, with the brothers' figures "D & P VH" surmounted by a flower. Postal mark "DHollande". Restorations and paper reinforcements inside the double sheet. Rare letter, addressed to the young Baron de La Tour d'Aigues, "chez Gagne, baigneur, Rue de Richelieu à Paris", in response to his order for flower bulbs and rare trees, destined for his exceptional botanical garden located at the Château de la Tour d'Aigues, in Provence [Vaucluse]. Regarding orders for single and double flower bulbs: "Concerning the few miscellaneous onions that you order us to send you, there are three items that cannot be packed at present, with the hope of good success. These are Martagon Canadensis Maÿor, which is beginning to flower, the young onion being only very small at the moment, as there is an old and a new onion together. The double tuberose is now flowering, and the onions are not yet in condition; and the double sun this plant is also flowering, and will be out of season for transport: this is to say the double French sun flower. The other large sun we must have seed, we believe there is still to have although we have not seen in a long time. It seems to us to wait until mid-September, and pack them in my crate to send it to you in Paris. Concerning the catalog of orange trees and rare plants, here is one in it. It's from an amateur in these shrubs and plants. It's impossible to write down the price. He sells them according to the condition of each species; this man lives a few hours from here, and we rarely speak to him, but we often correspond by letter. For the last two years, he has been delivering these rarities to us, to serve as a friend in Hamburg, and this to send to Petersburg in the Baltic Sea". They go on to talk about the dissatisfaction of Hamburg customers with orange trees. "The price of each kind of orangery, including lemons, almost always comes to four florins a piece. They are young stems 2 or 2 ½ feet long with a small crown". They then discuss the difficulty of transport, which is done in crates and by ship, the stages of which he details, in particular the Texel roadstead in Holland "you have to wait there for a favorable wind to be able to leave this roadstead, which also often takes a very long time. [...] If however you wanted the Harades, it seems to me to be the best to pack them in a crate, as well provided as possible: because to recommend these things to a captain to put them in the air and water in his time, that would be in vain, because they do not understand in any way to look after shrubs and plants". They send catalogs and price lists [Dirk and Pieter Voorhelm raised hyacinth, tulip, ranunculus, anemone and other flower bulbs [hyacinthen, tulipaanen, ranuncules, anemones en andere bloem-bollen; te bekomen by Dirk Voorhelm, bloemisten tot Haarlem]. [Jean-Baptiste Jérôme Bruny, baron de La Tour d'Aigues (1724-1795), an immensely wealthy Marseille shipowner and owner of many remarkable properties, was a keen student of natural science, botany, zoology and the sciences. On the grounds of his château de La Tour-d'Aigues, he created a park filled with rare and exotic animals (monkeys, gazelles, chameleons and birds), an arboretum, a greenhouse of tropical plants, an orangery and a menagerie. At the time, Baron de La Tour d'Aigues was boarding at Gagne's, a "baigneur", i.e. a tenant of baths and "chambre garnies", on rue de Richelieu].
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