Glass sea creatures facts for kids
The glass sea creatures are incredible glass artworks made by a father and son team, Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka. These artists were famous for creating detailed glass models of marine invertebrates, which are animals without backbones, like jellyfish and sea anemones. Before they made the famous Glass Flowers, the Blaschkas ran a successful business selling these glass sea creatures to museums and collectors all over the world.
Between 1863 and 1880, the Blaschkas worked in Dresden, Germany. They made at least 10,000 detailed glass models. These models showed about 700 different kinds of sea creatures.
Many museums and universities still have large collections of these models today. Harvard's Museum of Natural History displays many of them. Its Museum of Comparative Zoology has 430 models. Cornell University owns about 570 models, and many have been carefully fixed. The largest collection in Europe, with 530 pieces, is at Ireland's Natural History Museum. Other places with collections include the Boston Museum of Science, the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and the Natural History Museum in London.
Contents
How the Glass Sea Creatures Were Inspired
In 1853, Leopold Blaschka went on a trip to the United States. He was very sad because he had recently lost his father and his wife. On the way, his ship stopped moving in the sea for two weeks. During this time, Leopold studied and drew the sea animals around him. He was fascinated by how clear their bodies were, much like the glass his family used to work with.
Leopold felt a deep sense of wonder looking at these glowing ocean creatures. He wrote about seeing "a flashlike bundle of light beams" and "thousands of sparks" in the dark sea. This feeling of wonder would later inspire his work.
When Leopold returned to Dresden, he focused on his family business. They made glass eyes, decorations, and lab equipment. He also trained his son, Rudolf, to be a master glassworker. In his free time, Leopold enjoyed making glass models of plants. This hobby would much later lead to the famous Glass Flowers. But for a while, it was just a fun pastime.
However, his plant models were so amazing that they caught the eye of Prince Camille de Rohan. The Prince, who loved nature, asked the Blaschkas to make 100 glass orchids for his collection. The Prince was very impressed. He showed these models in his palace in Prague. This is how another important person, Ludwig Reichenbach, heard about the Blaschkas' incredible skills.
Professor Reichenbach's Special Request
Professor Reichenbach was the director of the natural history museum in Dresden. He had a big problem: how to show marine life. It was easy to display land animals like gorillas, but sea creatures were different. In the 1800s, the only way to show them was to put a live specimen in a jar of alcohol. This killed the animal, and over time, they would turn into colorless blobs. They weren't pretty or good for teaching.
Professor Reichenbach wanted something better. He needed colorful, 3D models of sea creatures that looked real and would last. By chance, in 1863, he saw an exhibit of Leopold Blaschka's detailed glass flowers.
Professor Reichenbach was amazed by the plant models. He was sure Leopold could solve his problem. So, in 1863, he asked Leopold to make twelve model sea anemones. These glass sea creatures were a huge improvement over old methods like drawings or wax models. They were exactly what Professor Reichenbach needed. They also gave Leopold a way to express the wonder he felt when he saw the glowing ocean life years before.
These glass models were "perfectly true to nature." This was a huge opportunity for both science and the Blaschkas. Professor Reichenbach was so happy with his new glass sea creatures that he told Leopold to stop his family's old business. He suggested selling glass marine invertebrates to museums, aquariums, and universities instead. This advice turned out to be very smart and important for both their money and for science. Leopold followed the director's suggestion.
A Very Successful Business
Unlike the later Glass Flowers, which were made for just one university, the Blaschka glass sea creatures became a worldwide business. They were not just for museums. In the late 1800s, people became very interested in the natural world. Home aquariums became popular, and deep-sea diving showed people amazing new creatures. It became a sign of culture and sophistication to have examples of nature in one's home.
So, private individuals also wanted these special models. The Blaschkas knew this and knew that many museums would want them too. They started a mail-order business. This business was incredibly successful! They made and sold 10,000 glass invertebrates. These were shipped all over the world.
"The world had never seen anything quite like the beautiful, scientifically accurate Blaschka models." Yet, you could order them through a simple catalog. For example, a small glass octopus might cost about $2.50. Museums and universities started buying them in large numbers. Directors of natural history museums everywhere had the same problem as Professor Reichenbach. The Blaschka mail-order business worked for two main reasons:
- There was a huge demand for these models all over the world.
- The Blaschkas were the only and best glass artists who could make models that were scientifically perfect.
At first, they based their designs on drawings in books. But Leopold soon used his own earlier drawings to create very detailed models of other species. Their fame quickly grew.
Leopold wrote in a catalog that their models had been bought by museums and schools "in all the quarters of the globe." This included places like New Zealand, Japan, India, and many universities in the United States. They also sold to places in Great Britain, Scotland, Ireland, Austria, and Germany.
Leopold kept making new models by studying marine animals from the North Sea, Baltic Sea, and Mediterranean. He even built an aquarium at his house to keep live specimens. This way, he could model them directly.
However, the future of the marine invertebrate business would eventually be linked to the models bought by Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. After the museum started in 1859, a collection of 430 glass sea creatures was bought. This set was not the biggest, but it would have a huge impact later on.
From Sea Creatures to Glass Flowers
In a strange twist of history, the glass sea creatures sold to Harvard became very important. This was because Harvard was opening its new Botanical Museum in 1888. The first director, George Lincoln Goodale, had empty rooms and needed to create a museum for teaching botany. He faced a familiar problem.
Harvard was a global center for studying plants. Professor Goodale wanted the best for his students. But the only way to show plants was using pressed, flat specimens. These specimens often lost their color and were not good for teaching. Goodale's problem was much like Reichenbach's, but for plants instead of sea animals. In both cases, the usual way of showing specimens made them lose their color and 3D shape.
Like Professor Reichenbach, Professor Goodale first learned about Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka's skill from an exhibit. He saw the glass marine invertebrates at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. And just like Reichenbach, Goodale immediately knew that the Blaschkas had the answer to his problem.
So, in 1886, Goodale contacted the Blaschkas. He asked them to make a series of glass plant models for Harvard. At first, Leopold didn't want to, because his business selling glass sea creatures was doing very well. But eventually, the famous glass artists agreed to send some test models to the U.S. Even though these models were damaged during shipping, the pieces convinced Goodale that Blaschka glass art was a great investment for education.
With money from Elizabeth C. Ware and her daughter Mary, the first contract was signed. It said the Blaschkas only needed to work half-time on the plant models. This allowed them to keep making the glass sea creatures. However, in 1890, they signed a new agreement. This allowed Leopold and Rudolf to work full-time on the Glass Flowers. This meant the production of glass sea creatures slowed down and eventually stopped. The fame and attention of the Blaschkas shifted to the Glass Flowers. This project lasted for fifty more years, ending with Rudolf Blaschka's death. Leopold had died thirty-nine years earlier.
The Glass Models Today
Today, more than a century after they were made, the glass sea creatures are often overshadowed by the more famous Glass Flowers. Many people who know about the Glass Flowers have never even heard of the sea creatures. For a while, "these glass animals began to disappear" into storage. People started to forget they existed. However, recently, that has begun to change. The invertebrate models are being remembered and rediscovered.
Corning Museum of Glass
The Corning Museum of Glass has the largest known collection of Blaschka sea creatures, with 700 models bought in 1888. They are displayed in an exhibit called Fragile Legacy. Researchers are using this collection to study creatures still living in our oceans today. The exhibit also lets visitors try making glass sea slugs and see new artworks inspired by the Blaschkas.
Harvard University
Even the models bought by Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) were somewhat forgotten. They were scattered across different departments. People thought the university only had 60-70 models, but they actually had 430!
Recently, Harvard has restored and repaired many of these glass sea creatures. They got help from Elizabeth R. Brill, a glass worker and marine biologist. (Brill later wrote a book about the glass sea creatures.) Today, they are part of the Harvard Museum of Natural History Sea Creatures in Glass display. When combined with the Glass Flowers, this is the largest Blaschka collection on display in the world.
Harvard's Renovation Exhibit
From 2015 to early 2016, the Harvard Museum of Natural History had a special temporary exhibit. It showed 27 popular plant models and some items from the Blaschka archives. This was while the main Glass Flowers exhibit was being fixed up. This exhibit was special because it was the first time the Glass Flowers and the Glass sea creatures were shown together in a big, equal display. The temporary exhibit closed when the main Glass Flowers exhibit reopened on May 21, 2016. The Glass sea creatures stayed as a permanent exhibit in that area until 2020. Then, they moved to their own nearby room and exhibit.
Cornell University
In 1885, Andrew Dixon White, the first president of Cornell University, approved buying 570 glass marine invertebrates. Some of these are now on display at Corson Mudd Hall and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum. This makes Cornell one of the few universities where students and the public can see these amazing creations.
However, like many other collections, they were neglected for a time. They remained forgotten until the late 1900s. Cornell has now restored about 170 of the models. Restoration work will continue as money becomes available.
National Museum of Ireland
The Natural History Museum in Dublin was one of the Blaschkas' first customers. They first ordered 85 glass models, paying a large sum of £15. They went on to buy 530 models from the Blaschkas. This makes it the largest collection of Blaschka Invertebrate Models in Europe.
The "Dead Zoo," as Ireland's Natural History Museum is sometimes called, has studied how to preserve these delicate objects. Like Corning, they have always taken excellent care of the Sea Creatures. The National Museum of Ireland is an important center for learning about the Blaschkas. In 2006, they hosted the Dublin Blaschka Congress with University College Dublin. This meeting brought together experts from different fields who study scientific glass models. The Congress discussed both the Glass Flowers and their older sea creature cousins.
University of Wisconsin–Madison
In 2007, the University of Wisconsin–Madison Zoological Museum accidentally found their forgotten collection of 50 models. Curator Paula Holahan found them hidden in "keyholes" under exhibit cases. She said, "It's not uncommon to find things packed away in any museum that is over 100 years old." These models are currently too fragile to be shown to the public. They are kept in storage until money is found to restore them. The museum hopes to find a sponsor for the restoration before they become too old to fix.
Field Museum of Natural History
Some glass models, including shells and sea slugs, were shown at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. The Field Museum bought 2,947 models from Ward's Natural Science Establishment. Many of these are now on display in the What is an Animal? exhibit.
Natural History Museum, London
The Natural History Museum, London has 182 of the Blaschka models.
Museum of Science (Boston)
The Museum of Science (MoS) in Boston has a small display of marine invertebrates. You can see them towards the end of their Natural Mysteries exhibit.
D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum
The D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum at the University of Dundee in Scotland shows Blaschka models of marine invertebrates. Its founder, Scottish biologist and mathematician D'Arcy Thompson, bought them in 1888 to use for teaching. In his 1917 book On Growth and Form, Thompson compared the shapes of sea invertebrates to shapes made by glass-blowers. This suggests a link to these models.
Lost Glass Artworks
Many of the Glass sea creatures have not yet been found. Leopold's record books show where many shipments went. However, the condition and current location of most of these collections are still unknown. The first six glass sea anemones bought by Reichenbach in 1863, and the rest of that first collection, were destroyed during the bombing of Dresden in World War II.
See also
- Lampworking
- Glassblowing
Images for kids
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Blaschka model of sea anemones
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Blaschka model of jellyfish
