The glass menagerie

At the end of two flights of stairs, in the middle of the bustling Harvard campus, lies a time capsule that few are aware of. On a grey morning in June, I walked up the dark, metal stairway for my first encounter with this well-kept secret - 'The glass menagerie'. 




I stood surrounded by victorian cherry wood vitrines proudly displaying nearly 4,300 three-dimensional botanical specimens, representing nearly 840 species of plants from a 170 different families. In addition to their evergreen and brilliantly natural hues, they are also pristinely delicate, fragile and over a century old. They are not a modern technological marvel; they are in fact a relic of history. From a time when scientific study of the natural world was plagued by the limitations of time and resources, and when practical matters of distance, transport, storage and preservation could not be trivialized. 

These specimens are the part of a glass menagerie that is more than a century old. Their's is a tale of wonder that is shaped by the primal human obsession to collect and create that and the narrative begins in the Renaissance Europe. 

In the sixteenth century, Europe woke up after the dark ages to the rest of the world in a period of renaissance. Status-conscious royals, nobles, physicians and apothecaries - anyone who could afford to - began assembling eclectic objects in a single room. 'Wunderkammern' or cabinets of curiosity, as they were called, are the ancestors of our modern day museums. They broadly expressed the beautiful, the monstrous, and the exotic: preserved flora and fauna, scientific instruments, objects of art and genetic mutations. They began as odes to idiosyncrasy driven by an obsession to collect but soon transformed into precursors of a  scientific quest that goes on till today. 

One of the earliest steps in this transformation from the 'weird' to the wonderful was the development of the universal classification system in 1753 by Carolus Linneaus (1707-1778), a swedish botanist. Linneaus believed that, "The first step in wisdom is to know the things themselves" and thus devised a simple, beautiful and instructive way to classify all living things using two word names in latin - first identifying the genus, and the second, the species. His work was carried forward by biologists such as Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) and Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine de Monet de Lamarck (1744-1829). Their research led to a flood of publications. Some of them, like Pierre Joseph Redoute's Les Liliacees, Les Roses and James Audobon's Birds of America were not only scientific treatises but also masterpieces of draftsmanship and printing. 

Linnaeus and the Enlightenment also paved way for proper scientific collecting as naturalists began to prepare their specimens with greater care. But early preservation techniques were crude and did harm than good as insects were pickled in spirits, snakes were crammed with straw, shells were boiled and shipped in sawdust. Naturalists were thus reduced to studying animals from illustrations and text books that were painstakingly made to try and recapitulate nature's three dimensional wonders on flat two dimensional plates that gave no indication of size or scale and were open to misinterpretation. 

Around the same time, England was also caught in the throes of another craze, as Philip Henry Gosse (1810-1888), a self taught British naturalist popularized the notion of keeping sea creatures in oxygenated saltwater aquariums. His Actinologica Brittanica: A history of British sea-anemones and corals was a compendium of his illustrations by keeping animals in such aquariums. The British craze for aquariums began from the idea of 'Wunderkammern' but was fueled by the availability of inexpensive glass plates and the discovery that sea weed could be used to oxygenate water in the aquariums. At this time, the generally successful method of transporting live specimens of sea anemones and mollusks over long distances consisted of wrapping them in wet seaweed, placing them in glass jars and packing the jars in baskets. With these and other improvements, the first large public aquarium was established by the Zoological Society of London in 1853. 

Around the same time (between 1872 and 1876), in keeping with the spirit of exploration, the British Admirality and the Royal Society also initiated the Challenger expedition - a massive feat of oceanographic exploration where the HMS Challenger, a massive 2300 ton warship, covered nearly 69,000 nautical miles charting the world's oceans as oceanographers mapped the seabed and ocean currents and biologists collected thousands of species of marine life. The findings of this expedition were studied by prominent researchers of the time like Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) and were published as a compendium in 50 volumes. 

And thus the quest that began as a private luxury in the homes of the affluent, soon transformed into a public fascination as museums began opening their doors to the public in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Subsequent to the Louvre in 1793 and the Prado in Madrid in 1809, public museums began mushrooming all over Europe and America. In this climate of scientific wonder and renaissance began the story of the glass menagerie and its two creators - the father-son duo of the Blaschkas. 

The story of the Blaschkas begins in the small town of Bohmisch Aicha, in the now Czech Republic, where Leopold Blaschka, the father, continued his family tradition of flame working. Despite a strong interest in natural history and art, Leopold entered the family business of making costume jewelry and other fancy goods with metal and flame worked glass. His quaint world was however shattered by two devastating losses when his first wife died of Cholera in 1850, followed by his father in a couple of years. Devastated, the grieving young Leopold took time off to visit the United States. On his maiden voyage though the ship was becalmed for two weeks near the Azores and young Leopold passed his time collecting and illustrating jelly fish and other marine invertebrates. Their glasslike transparency fascinated this flame worker and this sense of wonder transformed his life from there-on. 

Leopold describes his sense of awe and wonder (in this translation provided by Henri Reiling) -
"It is a beautiful night in May. Hopeful, we look out over the darkness of the sea, which is as smooth as a mirror; there emerges all around in various places a flash like bundle of light beams, as if it is surrounded by thousands of sparks, that forms true bundles of fire and of other bright lighting spots, and the seemingly mirrored stars."

After the death of his wife, Leopold had sought consolation in collecting, studying and painting plants and upon his return to Europe after his wondrous encounters with the glass-like creatures, he began making glass models of plants for his own amusement.  These models came to the attention of Prince Camille de Rohan, an aristocratic horticulturist who has established a world-famous garden on one of his estates at the Sychrov castle near Aicha. Between 1860 and 1862, the prince exhibited nearly 100 models of orchids and other exotic plants - all in glass. 

Leopold's journey began with making costume jewelry, chandeliers and other fancy goods but gradually expanded into jewelry decorated with flame worked flowers, flame worked glass eyes and laboratory equipment. However, his work with the Prince opened new avenues and led him onto a new vocation - the art of making scientific models.  The Blaschkas' models varied greatly in complexity and in their method of construction. Component parts were formed from both clear and colored glass using a combination of lampworking and glassblowing. The parts were then either fused together or assembled with adhesives, probably hide glue. Where necessary, other materials were used in the construction: fine copper wires were added to reinforce delicate tentacles and gills and painted paper was cleverly incorporated to represent internal structures. Surfaces were painted with colors mixed with gum or glue.

Impressed with Leopold's craftsmanship, the prince introduced Leopold to Prof. Ludwig Reichenbach, director of the botanical garden and the natural history museum in Dresden and this resulted in regular exhibitions of Leopold's glass models in the city's botanical garden and in a museum in Liege, Belgium. Prof. Reichenbach then commissioned Leopold to make models of sea anemones and other marine invertebrates to be displayed at the natural history museum and this further attracted the attention of other museum directors. 

By the age of 40, Leopold was a successful model maker. His skilled flame working, apprenticeship with a jeweler and years of running a family business had amply trained him for working at a very small scale. Leopold used several design sources beginning with the printed page from the works of PH Gosse (who popularized the aquarium). Gosse's illustrations provided Leopold with images of sea anemones and also suggested that the models could be displayed on natural, rock-like surfaces. Gosse's plates however gave no sense of scale or dimension which an accurate three dimensional model needs and this set Leopold on the lookout for other sources. Around this time, Leopold was also joined by his son Rudolf, who brought fresh zeal and enterprise to this venture. 

Over the years, the Blaschka duo worked from books and other publications from all over Europe. True to the times, they also relied on animals preserved in glass jars of alcohol but these were a mixed blessing as the specimens lost their coloring and having no backbones to support them collapsed into shapeless masses at the bottom of the jars. Rudolf was an enthusiastic assistant to his father and soon injected new ideas into the business. The Blaschkas began to maintain living specimens in seawater aquariums of the kind promoted by Gosse and could successfully maintain anemones for 'years'. They acquired live specimens from Naples, from Chioggia and Trieste in the upper Adriatic, from Weymouth on the english channel and from suppliers on the coasts of the North and Baltic seas. Leopold further expanded these sources by venturing on expeditions to document new species. In 1879 for example, Leopold went on an field trip to the upper adriatic which afforded him an opportunity to observe a greater number and variety of invertebrates. Later, he made more ambitious field trips to the United states and the Carribbean in 1892 and 1895. 

The Blaschka's glass models were well timed with the aquarium craze that swept through England and they made it possible to stock waterless aquariums with sea anemones and other invertebrates. These required little or no maintenance, and unlike true aquariums, no restocking in event of death. The glass models also retained their shape and color. The Blashckas' archive of drawings and sketches from textbooks further ensured that these models were accurate. The glass anemones were soon joined by corals, jellyfish, mollusks and other species. 

The Blaschkas' skill in producing minutely detailed replicas was further supported by the socio-political climes of the era. Beginning with the French revolution, traditional values were challenged and in many cases transformed in Europe. The development of science and the expansion of public education provided greater opportunities for their models. The Blashckas' succeeded because their models solved a problem that confronted all directors of Natural history museums. While the vertebrates could be displayed relatively easily by stuffing and mounting, the taxidermists could not work their magic on the invertebrates (jellyfish, squids and so forth). As opposed to the limited scope of the existing method of bottles of alcohol, the glass sculptures provided museum curators with displays of permanent form and feature. 

The proliferation of museums and the resultant emergence of suppliers to these museums, expanded the Blaschkas' presence. They soon had a presence in India, New Zealand, Tokyo, Austria, Ireland, Scotland, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, Australia, France and multiple places in the United States. The father-son duo managed to maintain a prodigious output through the years as they made hundreds and thousands of models. 

Harvard university, my haunt for the day, began forming its teaching collections in the 1850s under the leadership of zoologist, Louis Agassiz (1807-1873). At the founding of the museum of comparative zoology in 1858, Agassiz made an impassioned speech about the lack of a teaching collection in the United States which necessitated the students traveling to Europe. He vowed to remedy the situation and it was Agassiz who acquired the zoological museum's first 350 Blaschka models. 

In 1886, George Lincoln Goodale, a professor of Botany at Harvard University, traveled to Germany to persuade Leopold to abandon his successful career making models of invertebrates and to focus on plants instead. As the director of the Harvard Botanic Garden, Prof Goodale desired to represent the full glory of the plant kingdom in the natural history museums that were being developed at Harvard. The display would also help supplement the botanical courses as many plant beds and greenhouses were subject to the inhospitable New England winters, further limiting the available options. Prof. Goodale was on the lookout for something aesthetically pleasing and scientifically accurate, since presenting plants as attractive displays was tougher. Traditional botanical teaching aids included models fashioned from wax-covered silk or Papier mache in addition to fresh fruits and flowers. Although dried, pressed herbarium specimens were also frequently used to supplement these options, these had limited appeal and utility. Impressed by the glass zoological models at the museum, Prof. Goodale desired something similar for his plants to point out their morphological features during lectures. He thus traveled to Dresden, Germany where the Blaschkas lived and ultimately persuaded them to accept a small commission for a few plant models. This in some sense brought Leopold's journey a full circle and the result was a unique collection of botanical models, that I stand witness to today. These became known as the glass flowers of Harvard and while the invertebrate models are spectacular, the botanical models are simply breathtaking for their sheer diversity and accuracy. 

With Prof Goodale's advocacy and generous financial support from Mary Lee Ware, the initial small commission to the Blaschkas was extended into a ten year contract and the resulting glass models were titled the Ware collection of Blaschka glass models of plants. This collection represents the diversity of flora, with an emphasis on economically important plants used in everything, from food to medicines. The models were largely based on plants that the Blaschkas cultivated on their property from various sources. By the mid-1890s, the Blaschkas had made models of several hundred species to represent the major plant families and had begun to exhaust their european sources. 

At this point, Rudolf was anxious to visit America to study some of the plants of interest in their native environment and to make fresh studies. Armed with color pencils and drawing paper, Rudolf began his voyage to America early in 1892. Rudolf began a diligent study of the flowering plants in the Harvard botanic garden and also completed an expedition to Jamaica. He also traveled the vast North American continent, extensively sampling the terrain and the interesting flora. In these voyages he made extensive drawings for himself and his father. Unlike the invertebrate models, Rudolf drew the plans in their natural settings and also dissected them in order to highlight their various parts, either life size or magnified. He made detailed illustrations to provide reference information on color, and dimensionality that would be lost from the herbarium specimens as the plants were pressed and dried. He also included top, front, back and side views of the flowers and their internal structures such as stamens and pistils. He drew cutaway views to record the size ratios and the placement of each part of the plant. His notes also provide critical information about the plants such as the number denoting the color (to try and correlate with the pigments used by his father to paint the parts of the colored glass models). He also gave descriptors for textures, sheen, opacity etc in addition to designations for twists, furrows, creases, wrinkles and spots.  

Although the surviving archive of specimen, drawings and labels is incomplete, Rudolf probably documented upwards of 350 species, and with Leopold created more than 250 sets of models based on this 1892 season alone. The work proved so valuable that he returned for a second season in three years - this time as a more experienced traveler. It was during this second season of exploration that Leopold suffered a stroke and died leaving Rudolf with the arduous task of finishing the models that Leopold had begun. 

Despite the lack of any formal training, Rudolf was thorough and meticulous as any scientist in the day as he recorded the unique or relevant features of a genus or a species in addition to the physical characteristics. From 1896 to 1936, when the last shipments of the models were received, he added more than 200 species, including several series on grasses, insect pollination, progression of fruit blight etc. Rudolf Blaschka continued his work through his final years and despite his failing health, his devotion and fascination to these models remained unaffected. Unfinished models remained on his desk when he died on May 1, 1939. 

Rudolf writes in a letter to an American colleagues, Walter Deane in 1899:

"I think I belong to that same order of men as you, to the true lovers of nature. On every walk I take, there must be something to study of nature, it maybe a plant or insect or bird or whatever. I think a man can never finish these studies and is never too old to learn from nature..... What I saw and learned from nature on those trips in America gives me very sweet hours of remembering for all life." 

This glass menagerie has its origins in Europe but continues to fascinate museum-goers all over the world today. It is a legacy of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka and while it does offer insights into the history of science and the perspectives on model-making itself, it also reveals a delicate and often invisible link between artists and scientists - like the glass it is made of.