HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES

The Glass Flowers: A Fragile Legacy

Plant models, sculpted to preserve details forever, now need care themselves

By Anna Marie Murphy
Special to the Gazette

Susan Rossi-Wilcox (left), administrator of the glass flowers exhibit, conservator Sharon Smith Abbott (center), and Peabody Museum conservator Scott Fulton work on the conservation project. Photo by Jon Chase.

The elderly woman slowed her pace and chided her spryer companions, "You didn't tell me I'd be mountain climbing." Midway up the stairs to the third floor of Harvard's Museum of Natural History, she was headed for the tourist-friendly Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants, and the view at the top promised to be splendid. Under beams of fluorescent light, spread out in two large galleries, lie the encased "meadows" of orchids, lilies, mountain phlox and morning glories, cacti, pines, and more - known to all who have seen them simply as "the glass flowers."

Botany Professor George Lincoln Goodale first began collecting the startlingly realistic glass models in the late 19th century, backed by the financial support of Elizabeth C. and Mary Lee Ware, of Boston. In Harvard's "Museum of Vegetable Products," he wanted to provide what the University's greenhouses could not: a vast variety of plants in a continual state of bloom, to educate students and the public alike. After considering other media - silk, papier-mache, and dried plants - he chose glass for its durability and its potential for conveying detail.

Now the models, which range from 62 to 112 years old, are suffering the effects of age. According to Susan Rossi-Wilcox, administrator for the glass flowers and curatorial associate in the Harvard University Herbaria, some samples have experienced spontaneous fractures, while others have begun to separate or succumb to a corrosive "glass disease."

Rossi-Wilcox has been working with Scott Fulton, a conservator at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, and Sharon Smith Abbott, a glass conservator in private practice, to develop a plan for halting and, where possible, repairing the damage. Despite a modern arsenal that includes electron microprobe analysis and X-ray diffraction, their task will be daunting, owing to the complexity of the creative techniques employed by the models' makers and to the exquisite individuality of each leaf, petal, and blade.

The plants are the work of two men, Leopold Blaschka (1822-95) and his son, Rudolph (1857-1939). In an exclusive contract with Harvard, they produced the more than 3000 models. They created the entire collection without apprentices or assistants. It is, notes Rossi-Wilcox, "the only collection of its type in the world."

Visiting conservator Sharon Smith Abbott of Bridgton, Maine, examines a banana flower while taking a conservation inventory at the glass flowers exhibit at the Peabody Museum. She is wearing a headset that magnifies detail, allowing her to see deterioration of the botanical models. Photo by Jon Chase.

Born into a Bohemian glassworking family, the elder Blaschka began his career making glass eyes and floral jewelry. When Goodale encountered him, Blaschka had already made a name for himself fashioning models of invertebrate marine animals, such as jellyfish, primarily for museums. Indeed, samples of these delicate creatures had been acquired by the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and they remain here today.

In their Dresden workshop, the Blaschkas combined the latest technical knowledge of their day with a self-proclaimed inherited affinity for their materials. Leopold once described his approach to glass as a kind of "tact." They also, says Rossi-Wilcox, introduced the jeweler's use of wire to give their glass models a "new quality of resilience." An understructure of wire, fused to a petal or leaf, provides support for the strings of glass "beads" that make up the plants' stalks and branches.

Together they shaped the glass (Leopold preferred the larger pieces) and assembled the plants, sometimes by fusing them, sometimes by gluing them. Rudolph did more of the painting and eventually took up glass manufacturing and enameling. The early models were made from clear glass and painted with hide glue or isinglass (glue obtained from sturgeons) mixed with pigments. Striving for greater subtleties and more lasting hues, Rudolph increasingly turned to his furnace to produce colored glasses. He formulated batches to melt at different temperatures so that one color, when ground to a powder, could be dusted and then fired onto another without harming the base glass.

The models with which Rudolph achieved his most remarkable results with this technique are the "diseased fruit series" (completed in 1929). Ironically, says Rossi-Wilcox, these are also the specimens in which the "bloom" of corrosion has been most devastating. Although no one knows exactly what causes the corrosive white efflorescence to appear, it may result from glass formulas that were not as stable as Rudolph Blaschka had hoped. Regrettably, he left no recipes behind. Rossi-Wilcox is now consulting with a glass surface chemist, Carlo Pantano of Penn State University, to identify the compounds.

In assessing what can be done to preserve the collection, Fulton at the Peabody divides the problems into two categories: those that are man-made and those that stem from "inherent vices within the materials." Although Fulton notes that some models are in "practically pristine condition, suffering only from an accumulation of museum dust," he also points to another serious problem that, according to Rossi-Wilcox, probably can't be repaired: the shrinking of the organic varnishes that the Blaschkas applied to their finished models. As the varnishes contract, they tug at the glass, causing leaves, for instance, to curl and delaminate.

The fact is, the Blaschka glass flowers are mixed media pieces, and as the conservator Sharon Smith Abbott observes, these media "are not necessarily compatible - they expand and contract at different rates and respond to temperature and humidity at different rates." Although the majority of the models have held up fairly well, and most fractures can be mended plant by plant, the biggest challenge - and the bulk of the solution - lies in providing the models with the right stable environment.

How do matters stand now? While the initial cataloguing of the plants' ills has been completed, further research will be needed to fine-tune a preservation strategy. Just as outside funding brought the flowers to Harvard, supplemental fundraising may be necessary to save them.

Meanwhile, botany classes from Harvard and other area universities still take field trips to see the glass flowers, and, says Rossi-Wilcox, occasionally a graduate student will duck in to confirm a detail before an exam. But as over 120,000 visitors a year can attest, the Blaschka flowers are not just another teaching collection. Says Rossi-Wilcox, "They're Harvard's jewels."