Tulipieres – Magnificent Flower Pyramids, Towers or Pagodas

I just learned a thing. Have you seen tulipieres? Kinda like vases with a lot of sort of spouts. Sometimes they are tall and look like pagodas. Often they are cobalt blue and white chinoiserie, so they show up for me on Pinterest a lot.

You often see them with flowers poked into each hole.

I just found out that they were originally made to grow bulbs in. They are made in pieces. Bulbs can be placed in each piece so that when it sprouts, it will grow up through the spout, which will help support it. The water doesn’t run from the top all the way down. Each piece holds water.

It does look like the bulbs grew out through the spouts here.

These over-the-top creations were created to grow bulbs, mostly tulips during the Tulip Craze.

How to Grow Early Spring Flowers with Forcing Vases >

In 1554, Ogier Ghiselin de Busbecqthe was sent as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire court of Suleiman the Magnificent by  Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I. Busbecq was a diplomat, writer and herbalist. Among other things, he sent back tulip bulbs, likely the first tulips in Europe.

Carolus Clusius, a botanist at University of Leiden in what is now the Netherlands found that tulips could grow there. (You might think of the whole country as Holland, but that is actually the name of provinces.)

No question, tulips are beautiful. But the prices they went for when they were introduced went crazy! A single bulb could be sold for 10 times what a carpenter or weaver could earn in a year! You could buy a house for the price of a tulip bulb. And they only bloom for about one week a year!

Special containers were designed to grow and display these precious bulbs. And these tulip sprouters are over the top.

This photo is from a meeting between then President Obama and then Prime Minister of the Netherlands. Behind them is a massive tulipiere. The news article calls it a flower pyramid. I thought at first it was sitting on the table, but it’s not. It is behind the table. It is really really tall.

This looks like the same one, but it is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It is 63″ high. That’s taller than I am. I read that they were supposed to create an illusion of a tree, with tulip branches.

Here is another look at the one in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Close up you can see all of the layers.

The supports between the layers have crazy details.

These are the feet. Kind of Chinese motifs, but made in Holland.

Definitely a chinoiserie design.

Juliska makes tulipieres in their Country Estate Collection. The Tulipiere Vase is 10″ wide and 11.5″ high. It looks like the top of the Tulipiere Tower Set, but that piece is much smaller, 5″ wide and 6″ high.

Hopeless romantics, we have married our beautiful Delft blue vase with our stunning 17th-century-inspired Tulipiere to create this fabulous vessel that truly showcases flowers to their very best. The central vase is ideal for bunches and bouquets, while the individual receptacles at the base of the Tulipiere are for spotlighting single stems. The result is a blossoming sculpture – depicting idyllic scenes of the flora and fauna of our beloved Country Estate – and is fit to grace any dining table, entryway, or mantle with a gorgeous bounty of blooms.

Juliska Country Estate Tulipiere Vase on Amazon

The Juliska Country Estate Tulipiere Tower Set is is a modern version. It is made in three pieces. The bottom piece is 8″ wide and 8″ high. The center piece is 6″ by 6″ and the top piece is 5″ wide and 6″ tall.

This flower arrangement includes cut tulips.

From our Country Estate Collection- This stunning tiered tower of three vases was inspired by the tulipiere’s of the 17th century, when exotic imported flowers were status-symbols of elite households and given their own individual places in the spotlight. Display your our own beloved stems from the garden in this blossoming sculpture for a fresh dose of natural beauty.

Juliska Country Estate Tulipiere Tower Set on Amazon

This Four Floors Chinoiserie Pagoda Shape Flower Arrangement Ceramic Vase is also a tulipiere. It is made in Jingdezhen China.

This flower vessel is Wenchang Pagoda, which is divided into four floors, which can be disassembled and placed at any time, with a height of 23″.

Jingdezhen China Flower Pagoda Tulipiere on Amazon

The tulipiere is made in four pieces. Assembled it is nearly 2-feet tall. You can see how you are able to arrange and sprout bulbs in this. Or use it to hold cut flowers.

Enchanted Home has beautiful blue and white china, including reproduction tulipieres.  The top photo on this page is a tablescape from Enchanted Home.

Blue and White Porcelain Tulipiere – Decorative Vase with Watering Holes – Tall Flower Vases for Table Decorations for Living Room Accessories for Home Decor by Enchanted Home

This tulipiere features a soothing countryside design. The quality water-resistant porcelain material used for this blue and white flower vase makes it less subject to wear and tear. This makes our unique flower vase ideal for display for indoors and outdoors. This classic tall blue and white vase comes in four pieces with a watering hole in each piece. Your flowers will stay fresh as you fill the holes with water before arranging the flowers inside these vases for decor.

Our tulipiere flower vases decorative pieces make floral arrangements fun and easy. Whether you use it as a living room decor for table, desk, or garden, this tall white vase with blue details will liven up any space. Impress with an Enchanted Home: Make grace and beauty the personality of your home with our indoor and outdoor decor vases and art items. Our porcelain and antique products are exquisitely handcrafted to enchant you and your visitors.

Enchanted Home Blue and White Porcelain Tulipiere on Amazon
Enchanted Home Store on Amazon

Here is a closer view of how the tulipiere is used to arrange cut tulips.

Each little spout could support a tulip stem and leaves if it were growing a tulip.

This is a boughpot. This was what was designed around the same time to hold cut tulips.

If you are looking for a tulipiere, you will find them called a lot of different things. In American English, they are usually a tulipiere. If you are searching, you can try tulpenvaas (Dutch), tulip pyramid, tulip tower set, flower arrangement pagoda…

They are often blue and white, but they come in a lot of other colors, too. Many have classic delft decorations. Some have a chinoiserie motif.

Tulipieres are available in a lot of sizes. The best place to find them, even some of the really tall ones is on eBay.

If you think these are big, what about this one! This nearly 40-feet-high tulipiere is in the Land Art Delft sculpture garden.

It is called the Delft Tulpenvaas. This is the view near the Burger King parking lot.

When you think of Delft, you automatically think of Delft Blue, which has been made in the city’s ceramics factories since the 17th century. So if you wander through the city streets, you are bound to see Delft Blue everywhere, and not just in shops.

Let’s start with some historical information. The tulip pyramid vase was specially designed to display tulips and as such it was a showpiece and status symbol. The first ceramic tulip pyramid vases decorated with Delft Blue or Chinese patterns date back to the 17th century, and they became hugely popular during the reign of King and stadtholder William III and Mary Stuart.

In those days, tulips were an iconic and almost priceless status symbol; in their heyday, a tulip could be worth as much as a canal house. Tulip bulbs played a unique economic role as well and are now called the ‘17th-century bitcoin’.

Like the classic tulip pyramids, Royal Delft’s master painters painted this 12-metre-tall (!) mega-vase by hand.

Grootste tulpenpiramide ter wereld bij Land Art Delft in de lente met een tulpenveld