The Glass Flowers, formally The Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants, is a famous collection of highly-realistic glass botanical models at the Harvard Museum of Natural History at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
They were made by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka from 1887 through 1936 at their studio in Hosterwitz, Germany, near Dresden. They were commissioned by Professor George Lincoln Goodale, founder of Harvard's Botanical Museum, for the purpose of teaching botany, and financed by Goodale's former student, Mary Lee Ware and her mother, Elizabeth Ware. Over 3000 models, of 847 different plant species, were made.
For the only time in the Glass Flower Gallery's history, contemporary glass flowers by another artist have been shown between December 2011-March 2012. These ‘Ghost Orchids’ are a sculptural representation by Scottish artist Siobhan Healy which depict the rarest wild orchid found in the UK.
Read more about Glass Flowers: The Models, Restoration, Public Response, Glass Invertebrates
Famous quotes containing the words glass and/or flowers:
“Our ideal ... must be a language as clear as glass—the person looking out of the window knows there is glass there, but he is not concerned with it; what concerns him is what comes through from the other side.”
—Elizabeth Bowen (1899–1973)
“Nature has from the first expanded the minute blossoms of the forest only toward the heavens, above men’s heads and unobserved by them. We see only the flowers that are under our feet in the meadows.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)