Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka

The Blaschka family's roots trace to Josephthal in Erzgebirge, Bohemia, a region known for processing glass, metals, and gems. He and his son were native to the Bohemian Czech-German borderland. Leopold was apprenticed to a goldsmith and gem cutter in Turnov, a town in the Liberec Region of today's Czech Republic. -Hosterwitz ==Glass marine invertebrates==

) In 1853, Leopold travelled to the United States. While en route, the ship was becalmed for a fortnight due to no trade winds. During this time, Leopold studied and sketched local marine invertebrates, the glass-like transparency of their bodies intriguing him. He wrote: On his return to Český Dub, Leopold focused on producing glass eyes, costume ornaments, lab equipment, and other goods and specialty items whose production was expected of master lampworkers. He married his second wife, Caroline Riegel, in 1854. In his free time, he created glass models of plants. These would eventually become the basis of the Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants, also known as the Glass Flowers, which were collected many years later. During this period, Blaschka did not make any money producing the models. Eventually, however, the models attracted the attention of Prince Camille de Rohan, who arranged to meet with Leopold at Sychrov Castle in 1857. Prince Camille, an enthusiast of natural sciences, commissioned Leopold to craft 100 glass orchids for his private collection. In 1862, "the prince exhibited about 100 models of orchids and other exotic plants, which he displayed on two artificial tree trunks in his palace in Prague." This royal commission brought Blaschka's craft to the attention of Professor Ludwig Reichenbach, then director of the Natural History Museum in Dresden. ) ) Professor Reichenbach admired the botanical models and convinced Leopold to try creating glass models of marine invertebrates. In the nineteenth century, the dominant method of displaying preserved marine invertebrates was wet-preservation, which involved taking a live specimen and placing it in a sealed jar, usually filled with alcohol. This killed the specimen and frequently decomposed the specimens beyond recognition. Initially, the designs for these were based on drawings in books, but Leopold was soon able to use his earlier drawings to produce models of other species. His reputation spread quickly. Demand for the models pushed Leopold to further the training of his son and apprentice, Rudolf Blaschka. A year after the success of the glass sea anemones, the family moved to Dresden to give young Rudolf better educational opportunities. == Belgium ==

In 1886, Edouard Van Beneden, founder of the Institute of Zoology, ordered 77 Blaschka models in order to illustrate zoology lessons. Some of these models are still on display at Treasure in the Aquarium-Museum in Liège. ==Contact with Harvard==

By 1880, Rudolf was assisting his father in producing the glass models, including the production of 131 Glass sea creature models for the Boston Society of Natural History Museum (now the Museum of Science). These models, along with the ones purchased by Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, were seen by Professor George Lincoln Goodale, who was in the process of establishing and building the Harvard Botanical Museum's collection. In 1886, Goodale, traveled to Dresden to meet with the Blaschkas and request a series of glass botanical models for Harvard. Some reports claim that Goodale saw a few glass orchids in the room where they met, surviving from the work two decades earlier. To cover the expensive enterprise, Goodale approached former student Mary Lee Ware and her mother, Elizabeth C. Ware, already funders of Harvard's botany department. To resolve this, the Blaschkas signed an exclusive ten-year contract with Harvard to make glass flowers for 8,800 marks per year. - could open them safely under the observation of Customs staff. Their models showcased a range of plant specimens. In total, up to 164 taxonomic families and a diversity of plant part morphologies, including flowers, leaves, fruits, and roots, were created. Some were shown during pollination by insects; others were diseased in various ways. Goodale noted that the activity of the Blaschkas was "greatly increased by their exclusive devotion to a single line of work." Writing for the Annual reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College 1890-1891: ==Production of Glass Flowers==

Claims arose that Leopold and his son were using secret methods to make their glass models. These claims were refuted by Leopold himself. Blaschka stated "One cannot hurry glass. It will take its own time. If we try to hasten it beyond its limits, it resists and no longer obeys us. We have to humor it." The Blaschkas used a mixture of clear and colored glass, sometimes supported with wire, to produce their models. Ames continued to exchange letters with Mary Lee Ware discussing the project and commented on the quality and speed of production declining with Rudolf's age, expressing concern whether Blaschka could continue to produce models of satisfactory quality. Rudolf continued making models for Harvard until 1938. By then 80 years old, he announced his retirement. Neither he nor his father Leopold had taken on an apprentice and Rudolf left no successor, as he and his wife Frieda had no children. In total, Leopold and Rudolf made approximately 4,400 models for Harvard, 780 of which showed species at life-size. As of 2016, fewer than 75 per cent of the models are on regular display at the Harvard Museum of Natural History in the Ware Collection. Older exhibitions contained up to 3,000 models, but this number was reduced during renovations of the museum's collections. Unlike the glass sea creatures which were "a profitable global mail-order business", the Glass Flowers were commissioned solely for Harvard. ==Legacy==

Over the course of their collective lives, Leopold and Rudolf crafted as many as ten thousand glass marine invertebrate models and 4,400 botanical models, the most famous being Harvard's Glass Flowers. The Blaschka studio survived the bombing of Dresden in World War II and, in 1993, the Corning Museum of Glass and Harvard Museum of Natural History jointly purchased the remaining Blaschka studio materials from Frieda Blaschka's niece, Gertrud Pones. The Pisa Charterhouse, which houses the Museum of Natural History of the University of Pisa, has a collection of 51 Blaschka glass marine invertebrates. Leopold and Rudolf and their spouses are buried together in the Hosterwitz cemetery in Dresden. ==See also==