Description

An attractive, rare fand seemingly unrecorded firm catalogue, issued in 1913, lists hundreds of sorts of vegetables and flowers, available to buy in the form of seeds, bulbs or plants at the Çiçek Pasajı (Flower Passage) in Istanbul. The Ottoman text is accompanied with illustrations and a French translation with longer descriptions of the plants. The last page offer chemicals and illustrate various gardening tools.

The Çiçek Pasajı, located in the İstiklal Avenue in the Beyoğlu district of Istanbul was the center of the flower trade in the Ottoman Empire. Situated in the same street as the major embassies of Europe it was also a main destination for international inhabitants of Istanbul to acquire garden decoration and vegetable seeds

The catalogue is very rare and we could not find any institutional examples.

Özege catalogue of Ottoman books only mentions the same title, printed in 1326, with the same pagination, issued by Arşak Garoyan Matbaası (no. 2034).