A Thousand Glass Flowers

Exploring the Blaschka Glass Models at the Harvard Museum of Natural History

There was no way that this blooming redbud branch was made of glass. I’ve seen glass art before. I’ve taken a close look at Dale Chihuly installations and I can promise you that this botanical object that I was inspecting at the Harvard Museum of Natural History looked nothing like that.

These are the Blaschka Glass Models of Plants named for the father and son Czech duo who crafted them between 1886 and 1936. Over those fifty years, Leopold and his son, Rudolf, crafted over 4,300 models representing 780 plant species. Creating each plant was painstaking work. The artists melted glass tubes and rods over a flame and carefully manipulated the glass into petals, leaves, seeds and other botanical bits.

A cut plant will eventually start wilting but these glass blooms still look as fresh as when they were crafted over a century ago. George Lincoln Goodale, a Harvard professor and founder of their botanical museum, commissioned these models to aid in teaching botany. With these models, students could now examine the bloom of a downy skullcap in the middle of winter. This was a revolutionary idea. At the time, papier-mâché and wax models were the norm and they weren’t nearly as detailed as these glass specimens.

In addition to the life size glass plants, the Blaschkas also created other educational models depicting blown-up versions of petals, pistils, stamens and molecular structures.

One of the curators I chatted with explained that since the Blaschkas crafted these models over multiple decades, their methods evolved over time. Initially they were forming the glass models and then painting them. Later, they started using colored glass and using less paint.

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As this website explains, “the Blaschkas made a wire armature on which they strung together sections of glass tubing like beads.” With their various processes, they could make a leaf look shiny or matte. To recreate a fuzzy leaf, the artists would spread glue on the cooled glass and coat it with tiny strands of cotton fiber.

I can’t overstate how “alive” this collection looks. So many of these plants are ones growing in my own garden and seeing them here, under glass, each in bloom, was surreal. Here’s a replica of the barren strawberry that flowered in our front yard last month:

I don’t think my fig tree survived this last Pittsburgh winter but this fig branch has been fruiting for decades:

I was especially delighted to see “weeds” rendered with as much artistic care as the more “noble” plants. Here’s a bindweed, like the ones that Brooke and I have been incessantly weeding in the backyard raised beds where we’re growing vegetables:

I normally have a strong aversion to fake plants. I get annoyed every time I pass that aisle at Target that’s overgrown with plastic monsteras. On close inspection, those “plants” never look real. They don’t smell like leaves and soil. I imagine that when someone does buy it and bring it home, it’ll sit on a shelf for a few years and then – once the color has faded and it’s collected enough dust – it’ll get tossed during a move and spend the rest of its fake plant life in a massive landfill. But these “fake plants” crafted carefully from glass feel very different to me. They’re striking. They’re one of a kind. They’re inspiring. I imagine a student of botany at the beginning of the last century studying the structure of a petal and being filled with wonder for the natural world.

At some point walking through this dimly lit hall, I started thinking about the Netflix game show “Is it Cake?" On the show, contestants try to guess whether an object (such as a rollerblade or sewing machine or hamburger or handbag) is actually that object or, instead, a cake that’s been frosted and decorated to look identically like that object. Imagine a reboot called “Is it plants?” On this show, I closely examine a branch, a flower or a seed pod to deduce whether it’s actual plant material or solid glass. In the final moments of episode one, I’d break my teeth attempting to bite into a glass fig.

Have you ever visited Harvard’s glass flowers? Or are there any other botanical museum exhibits you’d recommend? I’d love to hear about them.

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And one more thing: Our backyard has been blooming like crazy over the past week. I was especially struck by this combination of golden alexander (Zizia aurea) and blue false indigo (Baptisia australis).

There’s some fleabane and honeysuckle making cameo appearances in the background too.

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