Postcard Dutch tulip field in bloom, Bollenstreek, nineteen-fifties or sixties

Dutch postcard from the nineteen-fifties or sixties showing a colour photograph of a tulip field in full bloom in the Bollenstreek. The image shows rows of fiery red tulips in geometric beds filling the entire foreground and middle ground, cut through by a narrow ditch characteristic of Dutch bulb cultivation. In the middle distance a green strip of meadow, and in the background another field in a different colour and a row of trees closing off the plot. The card has characteristic scalloped edges. On the verso the printing indication "Printed in Germany / Importé d'Allemagne" and the COLOR logo in the upper right, with a small AFKH publisher's monogram in the lower left. The verso is unwritten and unposted. The card is in good condition.

The Bollenstreek, the region between Haarlem and Leiden encompassing among others Lisse, Hillegom, Sassenheim and Noordwijkerhout, has formed since the seventeenth century the heart of Dutch flower bulb cultivation. The light sandy soil and mild climate made the region ideal for tulips, daffodils and hyacinths, and the annual bloom period in April and May became from the nineteenth century onward an international tourist attraction. With the opening of the Keukenhof in 1949 as an annual show garden event, the Bollenstreek grew into one of the most photographed landscapes of the Netherlands. This postcard from the early post-war decades documents a characteristic image of that time: large contiguous colour fields as part of a standardised bulb industry that exported tulips as an international commercial product. Tulip field cards were among the best-selling tourist souvenirs of the Dutch post-war period, typically printed by specialised German colour printing houses that offered higher technical print quality than was available in the Netherlands at the time.