Harvard Restores the Famed Collection of Blaschka Glass Plant Models – Ned Brown (2016)

Glassmakers Leopold Blaschka (1822-1895) and his son Rudolph Blaschka (1857-1939), provide a rich insight into the scientific appetite of the late Victorians in many disciplines of biology including botany as well as invertebrate zoology. Together they solved a rather difficult display obstacle faced by many natural history museums. Many botanical and zoological specimens loose their original qualities when preserved in herbariums and collection facilities. For outreach purposes especially in museums displays of such specimens are not appealing to their visitors. The work by the father and son team allowed a distilled close-up observation of the organisms in ways that is impossible other ways. Together they produced thousands of glass models now being kept in a few museums around the world.

One of the largest collection of Blaschka Glass Models is in Harvard Museum of Natural History. The collection was taken under intense conservation work and are now on a brand new display in fully restorated form in Boston.

There’s also another collection consisting of 185 models at The Museum of Natural History in London. This collection is displayed on rare occasions. In 1993 the Corning Museum and Harvard jointly purchased the remaining Blaschka studio materials from Gertrud Pones, Mrs. Rudolf (Frieda) Blaschka’s niece. The Blaschkas’ botanical drawings, extensively notated in preparation for glass working, were also purchased. These drawings were rendered mostly in pencil and watercolor and can be examined in an online digital archive at the Corning Glass Museum Library.

Blaschkas have wonderfully shown to the people that science can be beautiful and art can be informative. This was a time when the microscopic techniques allowed artistic representations of many single-celled organisms including the diatoms.

In the following lecture Eric Goldschmidt, Properties of Glass Supervisor at The Corning Museum of Glass and artist Wesley Fleming jointly up to explore the lampworking techniques of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka through a demonstration. Together they create glass marine organisms using some of the Blaschkas’ techniques. Additionally, a traditional Bohemian lampworking bench of the type used by Rudolf Blaschka is also featured.