The Cultures of Consumption Programmefunds research on the changing natureof consumption in a global context.The Programme investigates the differentforms, development and consequences ofconsumption, past and present. Researchprojects cover a wide range of subjects,from UK public services to drugs in eastAfrica, London’s fashionable West End toglobal consumer politics. The £5 millionCultures of Consumption Programmeis the first to bring together experts fromthe social sciences and the arts andhumanities. It is co-funded by the ESRCand the AHRC.

The aims of the Cultures of ConsumptionProgramme are:

● to understand the practice,ethics and knowledge ofconsumption

● to assess the changingrelationship betweenconsumption and citizenship

● to explain the shifting local,metropolitan and transnationalboundaries of cultures ofconsumption

● to explore consumption in thedomestic sphere

● to investigate alternative and sustainable consumption

● to develop an interfacebetween cutting edge academicresearch and public debate.

Findings

For further details take a look at our websitewww.consume.bbk.ac.uk

or contact Professor Frank TrentmannProgramme directortelephone+44 (0)20 7079 0603emailesrcConsumepd@bbk.ac.uk

orStefanie NixonProgramme administratorCultures of Consumption

Research ProgrammeBirkbeck CollegeMalet StreetLondon WC1E 7HXtelephone+44 (0)20 7079 0601facsimile+44 (0)20 7079 0602emailesrcConsume@bbk.ac.uk

CULTURES OF CONSUMPTIONRESEARCH PROGRAMME

shows one path in the establishment of large-scaletrade of natural commodities.

The relationship between science and commerce asit plays out in plant breeding is a twenty-first-centuryconcern; for example, genetic modification is debated onthe grounds of food provision, health and environmentalconcerns, and corporate involvement in research. Thesedebates are usefully informed by nineteenth-centuryprecedents in breeding and how breeding was explainedto consumers. The case study of seeds raises the issueof the extent to which cycles of consumption are ledby some characteristic of the commodity itself, in thiscase the fact that the commodity has it own life cycle.Although breeders had specific, often beneficial, aimsthat guided their botanical research, the huge foray intocrossing and breeding of seeds for the sake of ‘novelty’sometimes produced plants that were not themselves productive of another generation. This intervention innatural cycles, rather than reliance upon them, can beseen as an early form of planned obsolescence, wherethe commodities themselves encouraged an annual purchase. The marketing practices that supported thesepurchasing cycles – such as the o◊er of premiums or theuse of consumer testimonials – now appear to be takenfor granted by both purveyors and consumers, but weredeveloped over the course of the nineteenth-centuryas commerce moved away from relying on face-to-faceexchange. Commercial uses of new media may updateor extend business conventions that have existed forover a century.

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDYSeed Money: the economies of horticulture in nineteenth-century America ran from January 2005 to March 2007

as part of the ESRC/AHRC Cultures of Consumptionresearch programme (RES–154–25–0001). MarinaMoskowitz(University of Glasgow) was the principal investigator and researcher on the project. Archivalresearch was carried out primarily in the United States,at the Library of Congress; National Agricultural Library;Smithsonian Institution, as well as local, university, andmuseum archives in Rochester, New York; Philadelphia,Pennsylvania; and Boston, Massachusetts.

PUBLICATIONS INCLUDEMoskowitz M., ‘Broadcasting Seeds on the American

Landscape’, in Brown E., Gudis C., and Moskowitz M.(eds.), Cultures of Commerce: Representations andAmerican Business Culture (New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2006).

Moskowitz M., ‘The Limits of Globalization? TheHorticultural Trades in Postbellum America’, inNuetzenadel A. and Trentmann F. (eds.), Food andGlobalization: Consumption, Markets and Politics inthe Modern World (Oxford: Berg, forthcoming, 2008).

CONTACTDr Marina MoskowitzDepartment of HistoryUniversity of Glasgow1 University GardensGlasgow G12 8QQtelephone+44 (0)141 330 2962emailmam@arts.gla.ac.uk

4 Findings:Seed Money: the economies of horticulture in nineteenth-century America

Researcher:Marina Moskowitz

‘Charmer’ Pea andDanvers Yellow GlobeOnioncolour plate from VickVick Seed Company catalogue, 1892

The nineteenth-century American garden was a place of commerce andculture. The market for horticultural goods, most notably seeds, was diversein geographic and socioeconomic terms, as consumers planted for sustenance,economic livelihood, ornament, and leisure. The increasingly commercialexchange of seeds during the nineteenth century sat at the threshold betweenagrarian and industrial ways of life. As one of the earliest markets to reach anational scale, consumers used seeds to improve not only the individual plotsof land they tended, but also the larger national landscape. Through their purchases consumers bolstered both their individual domestic economiesand the broader political economy of the United States.

KEY FINDINGS● The seed trade was one of the first American businesses to reach a national consumer market.● Seeds were one of the first commodities exchanged ona large scale by mail-order sales; this type of commercialexchange co-existed with retail shop sales and door-to-door peddling.● The marketplace for seeds was constructed largely in

print. Advertising and catalogues were the sites of bothcommercial exchange and the transfer of horticulturalknowledge. Horticultural information was conveyedthrough copious and colourful images, as well as text.● Where goods, such as seeds, cannot be easily evaluat-ed, the issue of consumer trust, and the building ofbrand loyalty, is paramount. Consumers o◊ered theiropinions on both seeds and the firms that sold themthrough testimonial letters, often printed by the trade.● In the seed trade, the categories of consumer andproducer were fluid, as all participants in the marketcarried out the same horticultural practices of sowingseeds and tending plants. This fluidity was also seen inthe commodity chain for seeds, in which firms actedas both consumer and purveyor of seeds at di◊erentpoints in the market cycle.

HIGHLIGHTSThe nature of the seed tradeFor the seed industry to be successful, it needed to convince its consumers not to harvest seeds from theirown gardens, but rather to buy seeds from the companieseach year. Because most purchases of seeds were relative-ly modest, and occurred only annually, firms did whateverthey could to attract new customers and encourage consumer loyalty. Plants themselves – the careful buildingof seed stocks and the development of ‘novelties’ throughselection and breeding – were the cornerstones of allmarketing e◊orts. By planting seeds, consumers estab-lished and maintained a presence on the landscape.However, while the commodities encapsulated the potential for settlement and economic benefit, thetrade that grew up around them was increasingly

Seed Money:the economies of horticulturein nineteenth-century America

late-nineteenth century often included on-site printingworks to produce their marketing materials.

The seed catalogue emerged as a genre combiningcommerce, instruction, entertainment, and artisticmerit. Each plant species, variety, and strain was anopportunity for illustration, and the possible combinationsof these specimens were, literally, countless. More unique-ly, in the seed industry, illustrations in advertisement,catalogues, or on packages did not represent the actualobject sold. Seeds themselves were not depicted, butrather the promise of what those seeds might produce.All of the floral chromos [chromolithographs] weissue are painted by one of the best artists in this particular line in the country, and from flowersgrown in our own gardens. His duties are confinedto sketching and copying flowers or vegetables fromnature, designing and painting the original for thechromo, and designing the ornamental labels andshow cards, millions of which we print annually, andin furnishing the designs for the engravings thatadorn the various publications of the house of Briggs and Brother.’ – Briggs and Brother, 1875

Consumer commentaryGardeners of all kinds took these brightly coloured,highly illustrated, and informative texts into theirhomes and shared them with friends and neighbours.Consumers also responded to commercial ephemerathrough testimonial letters. Writing these letters wasa way of sharing horticultural success, such as neigh-bourhood acclaim for an abundant garden; prizes for horticultural specimen deemed the best at countyor state fairs; or financial gain from prolific crops withgood market value.

Testimonial letters were e◊ective as marketingtools because no particular status was needed toclaim success. The words of a well-established market gardener who relied on seeds for income were no moreauthoritative than the story of a self-described amateurgardener whose flowers were the envy of her neighbour-hood. Having some sort of professional expertise mightlend credence to a testimonial, but not having this experience could equally well convince buyers that suchresults were attainable by anyone. The forms of exchangebetween company and consumer – catalogues, letters,

untethered to a particular geographic location. Thoughseeds continued to be sold in local stores by known vendors, they were also the objects of early mail-ordersales in the United States.The relations of the Planter to his trusted Seedsmanare more intimate than those of the buyer andseller in any other line of business; with othergoods the buyer can largely judge of the qualityand value by the sample, while with seeds thepurchase is altogether a matter of confidence.’– W. Atlee Burpee Company, 1892

The promise of seedsPrint and visual culture became an important site forcommercial exchange in the horticultural trades. Whileit could be argued that all businesses benefited fromdevelopments in print technology over the course ofthe nineteenth century, a special relationship between,or even overlap of, seed sellers and the printing tradedid exist. Several early American seed sellers were alsotrained as printers and published their own catalogues,while the larger seed companies that flourished in the

‘

‘

‘

Findings:Seed Money: the economies of horticulture in nineteenth-century America

Findings:Seed Money: the economies of horticulture in nineteenth-century America

2 3

orders, all requested and sent on an annual basis –had the e◊ect of encouraging brand loyalty.The Asters were very fine, some seventy plantsbeing in full bloom at the time of the QuantrellRaid, and made, together with Snap Dragons,Dianthus, Heddewigs, Phloxes, Petunias and otherfine varieties, a very gay and beautiful appearance…Quantrell, with a dozen of his gang, came to destroythe place, but Quantrell said to my wife it was toopretty to burn, and should be saved… We shallcultivate flowers as long as we remember thishorrible rebellion.’ – George Ford, Lawrence, Kansas, 1864

MESSAGES FOR POLICY AND PRACTICEThe historical study of horticultural commerce has severalimplications for the present day. In an era of increasingconcern for the preservation of environmental resources,this research shines a spotlight on the ethics of consider-ing natural specimen as commodities. Although seedshave a long history as objects of informal trade, the standardisation and industrial scale of horticultural commerce over the course of the nineteenth-century

New French Cannas.Colour plate fromVick Seed Company catalogue, 1892

Above:cover of Vick’s FloralGuide, 1892

Above right:D.M. Ferry & Co. tradecards, 1889

late-nineteenth century often included on-site printingworks to produce their marketing materials.

The seed catalogue emerged as a genre combiningcommerce, instruction, entertainment, and artisticmerit. Each plant species, variety, and strain was anopportunity for illustration, and the possible combinationsof these specimens were, literally, countless. More unique-ly, in the seed industry, illustrations in advertisement,catalogues, or on packages did not represent the actualobject sold. Seeds themselves were not depicted, butrather the promise of what those seeds might produce.All of the floral chromos [chromolithographs] weissue are painted by one of the best artists in this particular line in the country, and from flowersgrown in our own gardens. His duties are confinedto sketching and copying flowers or vegetables fromnature, designing and painting the original for thechromo, and designing the ornamental labels andshow cards, millions of which we print annually, andin furnishing the designs for the engravings thatadorn the various publications of the house of Briggs and Brother.’ – Briggs and Brother, 1875

Consumer commentaryGardeners of all kinds took these brightly coloured,highly illustrated, and informative texts into theirhomes and shared them with friends and neighbours.Consumers also responded to commercial ephemerathrough testimonial letters. Writing these letters wasa way of sharing horticultural success, such as neigh-bourhood acclaim for an abundant garden; prizes for horticultural specimen deemed the best at countyor state fairs; or financial gain from prolific crops withgood market value.

Testimonial letters were e◊ective as marketingtools because no particular status was needed toclaim success. The words of a well-established market gardener who relied on seeds for income were no moreauthoritative than the story of a self-described amateurgardener whose flowers were the envy of her neighbour-hood. Having some sort of professional expertise mightlend credence to a testimonial, but not having this experience could equally well convince buyers that suchresults were attainable by anyone. The forms of exchangebetween company and consumer – catalogues, letters,

untethered to a particular geographic location. Thoughseeds continued to be sold in local stores by known vendors, they were also the objects of early mail-ordersales in the United States.The relations of the Planter to his trusted Seedsmanare more intimate than those of the buyer andseller in any other line of business; with othergoods the buyer can largely judge of the qualityand value by the sample, while with seeds thepurchase is altogether a matter of confidence.’– W. Atlee Burpee Company, 1892

The promise of seedsPrint and visual culture became an important site forcommercial exchange in the horticultural trades. Whileit could be argued that all businesses benefited fromdevelopments in print technology over the course ofthe nineteenth century, a special relationship between,or even overlap of, seed sellers and the printing tradedid exist. Several early American seed sellers were alsotrained as printers and published their own catalogues,while the larger seed companies that flourished in the

‘

‘

‘

Findings:Seed Money: the economies of horticulture in nineteenth-century America

Findings:Seed Money: the economies of horticulture in nineteenth-century America

2 3

orders, all requested and sent on an annual basis –had the e◊ect of encouraging brand loyalty.The Asters were very fine, some seventy plantsbeing in full bloom at the time of the QuantrellRaid, and made, together with Snap Dragons,Dianthus, Heddewigs, Phloxes, Petunias and otherfine varieties, a very gay and beautiful appearance…Quantrell, with a dozen of his gang, came to destroythe place, but Quantrell said to my wife it was toopretty to burn, and should be saved… We shallcultivate flowers as long as we remember thishorrible rebellion.’ – George Ford, Lawrence, Kansas, 1864

MESSAGES FOR POLICY AND PRACTICEThe historical study of horticultural commerce has severalimplications for the present day. In an era of increasingconcern for the preservation of environmental resources,this research shines a spotlight on the ethics of consider-ing natural specimen as commodities. Although seedshave a long history as objects of informal trade, the standardisation and industrial scale of horticultural commerce over the course of the nineteenth-century

New French Cannas.Colour plate fromVick Seed Company catalogue, 1892

Above:cover of Vick’s FloralGuide, 1892

Above right:D.M. Ferry & Co. tradecards, 1889

The Cultures of Consumption Programmefunds research on the changing natureof consumption in a global context.The Programme investigates the differentforms, development and consequences ofconsumption, past and present. Researchprojects cover a wide range of subjects,from UK public services to drugs in eastAfrica, London’s fashionable West End toglobal consumer politics. The £5 millionCultures of Consumption Programmeis the first to bring together experts fromthe social sciences and the arts andhumanities. It is co-funded by the ESRCand the AHRC.

The aims of the Cultures of ConsumptionProgramme are:

● to understand the practice,ethics and knowledge ofconsumption

● to assess the changingrelationship betweenconsumption and citizenship

● to explain the shifting local,metropolitan and transnationalboundaries of cultures ofconsumption

● to explore consumption in thedomestic sphere

● to investigate alternative and sustainable consumption

● to develop an interfacebetween cutting edge academicresearch and public debate.

Findings

For further details take a look at our websitewww.consume.bbk.ac.uk

or contact Professor Frank TrentmannProgramme directortelephone+44 (0)20 7079 0603emailesrcConsumepd@bbk.ac.uk

orStefanie NixonProgramme administratorCultures of Consumption

Research ProgrammeBirkbeck CollegeMalet StreetLondon WC1E 7HXtelephone+44 (0)20 7079 0601facsimile+44 (0)20 7079 0602emailesrcConsume@bbk.ac.uk

CULTURES OF CONSUMPTIONRESEARCH PROGRAMME

shows one path in the establishment of large-scaletrade of natural commodities.

The relationship between science and commerce asit plays out in plant breeding is a twenty-first-centuryconcern; for example, genetic modification is debated onthe grounds of food provision, health and environmentalconcerns, and corporate involvement in research. Thesedebates are usefully informed by nineteenth-centuryprecedents in breeding and how breeding was explainedto consumers. The case study of seeds raises the issueof the extent to which cycles of consumption are ledby some characteristic of the commodity itself, in thiscase the fact that the commodity has it own life cycle.Although breeders had specific, often beneficial, aimsthat guided their botanical research, the huge foray intocrossing and breeding of seeds for the sake of ‘novelty’sometimes produced plants that were not themselves productive of another generation. This intervention innatural cycles, rather than reliance upon them, can beseen as an early form of planned obsolescence, wherethe commodities themselves encouraged an annual purchase. The marketing practices that supported thesepurchasing cycles – such as the o◊er of premiums or theuse of consumer testimonials – now appear to be takenfor granted by both purveyors and consumers, but weredeveloped over the course of the nineteenth-centuryas commerce moved away from relying on face-to-faceexchange. Commercial uses of new media may updateor extend business conventions that have existed forover a century.

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDYSeed Money: the economies of horticulture in nineteenth-century America ran from January 2005 to March 2007

as part of the ESRC/AHRC Cultures of Consumptionresearch programme (RES–154–25–0001). MarinaMoskowitz(University of Glasgow) was the principal investigator and researcher on the project. Archivalresearch was carried out primarily in the United States,at the Library of Congress; National Agricultural Library;Smithsonian Institution, as well as local, university, andmuseum archives in Rochester, New York; Philadelphia,Pennsylvania; and Boston, Massachusetts.

PUBLICATIONS INCLUDEMoskowitz M., ‘Broadcasting Seeds on the American

Landscape’, in Brown E., Gudis C., and Moskowitz M.(eds.), Cultures of Commerce: Representations andAmerican Business Culture (New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2006).

Moskowitz M., ‘The Limits of Globalization? TheHorticultural Trades in Postbellum America’, inNuetzenadel A. and Trentmann F. (eds.), Food andGlobalization: Consumption, Markets and Politics inthe Modern World (Oxford: Berg, forthcoming, 2008).

CONTACTDr Marina MoskowitzDepartment of HistoryUniversity of Glasgow1 University GardensGlasgow G12 8QQtelephone+44 (0)141 330 2962emailmam@arts.gla.ac.uk

4 Findings:Seed Money: the economies of horticulture in nineteenth-century America

Researcher:Marina Moskowitz

‘Charmer’ Pea andDanvers Yellow GlobeOnioncolour plate from VickVick Seed Company catalogue, 1892

The nineteenth-century American garden was a place of commerce andculture. The market for horticultural goods, most notably seeds, was diversein geographic and socioeconomic terms, as consumers planted for sustenance,economic livelihood, ornament, and leisure. The increasingly commercialexchange of seeds during the nineteenth century sat at the threshold betweenagrarian and industrial ways of life. As one of the earliest markets to reach anational scale, consumers used seeds to improve not only the individual plotsof land they tended, but also the larger national landscape. Through their purchases consumers bolstered both their individual domestic economiesand the broader political economy of the United States.

KEY FINDINGS● The seed trade was one of the first American businesses to reach a national consumer market.● Seeds were one of the first commodities exchanged ona large scale by mail-order sales; this type of commercialexchange co-existed with retail shop sales and door-to-door peddling.● The marketplace for seeds was constructed largely in

print. Advertising and catalogues were the sites of bothcommercial exchange and the transfer of horticulturalknowledge. Horticultural information was conveyedthrough copious and colourful images, as well as text.● Where goods, such as seeds, cannot be easily evaluat-ed, the issue of consumer trust, and the building ofbrand loyalty, is paramount. Consumers o◊ered theiropinions on both seeds and the firms that sold themthrough testimonial letters, often printed by the trade.● In the seed trade, the categories of consumer andproducer were fluid, as all participants in the marketcarried out the same horticultural practices of sowingseeds and tending plants. This fluidity was also seen inthe commodity chain for seeds, in which firms actedas both consumer and purveyor of seeds at di◊erentpoints in the market cycle.

HIGHLIGHTSThe nature of the seed tradeFor the seed industry to be successful, it needed to convince its consumers not to harvest seeds from theirown gardens, but rather to buy seeds from the companieseach year. Because most purchases of seeds were relative-ly modest, and occurred only annually, firms did whateverthey could to attract new customers and encourage consumer loyalty. Plants themselves – the careful buildingof seed stocks and the development of ‘novelties’ throughselection and breeding – were the cornerstones of allmarketing e◊orts. By planting seeds, consumers estab-lished and maintained a presence on the landscape.However, while the commodities encapsulated the potential for settlement and economic benefit, thetrade that grew up around them was increasingly

Seed Money:the economies of horticulturein nineteenth-century America