The Botanical Wonders exhibition celebrated the singular triumph of glassmakers Leopold Blaschka (1822-1895) and his son Rudolf (1857-1939) and offered close-ups of the people and the craft process behind the glass flowers. Video narrated by David Whitehouse.

The story of the Blaschkas begins in the small town of Böhmisch Aicha (now Cˇesky´ Dub in the Czech Republic), where Leopold’s father continued the family tradition of flameworking. When Leopold was a student, his favorite  subjects were natural history and painting, and a visiting artist urged him

Before the development of high-speed moving image media, or fiberglass, naturalists and educators faced a quandary: it was often impossible to demonstrate exactly what an invertebrate looked like without a live specimen, because the spine collapses and color leaches out of one preserved in alcohol.

Who would have thought that a trip up a goat path would lead to the Museum’s acquisition of a 19th-century lampworking table that was part of the 2007 Botanical Wonders exhibition? In October 2006, Steve Gibbs, the Museum’s manager of events marketing, embarked on a mission to find a lampworking

Tropical and temperate plants continuously bloom in their Victorian cherry wood vitrines as visitors to the Harvard Museum of Natural History marvel at their favorite flowers and the most noxious weeds. These nearly 4,300 botanical models represent roughly 840 species and 170 plant families in an

808 In “Botanical Wonders: The Story of the Harvard Glass Flowers,” The Corning Museum of Glass brings to bear its unique curatorial, conservation, and glassmaking capabilities to illuminate more fully than ever before the story of the delicate glass replicas of botanical specimens known as the

810 In Botanical Wonders: The Story of the Harvard Glass Flowers, The Corning Museum of Glass brings to bear its unique curatorial, conservation, and glassmaking capabilities to illuminate more fully than ever before the story of the delicate glass replicas of botanical specimens known as the Glass

809 In “Botanical Wonders: The Story of the Harvard Glass Flowers,” The Corning Museum of Glass brings to bear its unique curatorial, conservation, and glassmaking capabilities to illuminate more fully than ever before the story of the delicate glass replicas of botanical specimens known as the

807 In “Botanical Wonders: The Story of the Harvard Glass Flowers,” The Corning Museum of Glass brings to bear its unique curatorial, conservation, and glassmaking capabilities to illuminate more fully than ever before the story of the delicate glass replicas of botanical specimens known as the

804 In “Botanical Wonders: The Story of the Harvard Glass Flowers,” The Corning Museum of Glass brings to bear its unique curatorial, conservation, and glassmaking capabilities to illuminate more fully than ever before the story of the delicate glass replicas of botanical specimens known as the

803 In “Botanical Wonders: The Story of the Harvard Glass Flowers,” The Corning Museum of Glass brings to bear its unique curatorial, conservation, and glassmaking capabilities to illuminate more fully than ever before the story of the delicate glass replicas of botanical specimens known as the

805 In “Botanical Wonders: The Story of the Harvard Glass Flowers,” The Corning Museum of Glass brings to bear its unique curatorial, conservation, and glassmaking capabilities to illuminate more fully than ever before the story of the delicate glass replicas of botanical specimens known as the

806 In “Botanical Wonders: The Story of the Harvard Glass Flowers,” The Corning Museum of Glass brings to bear its unique curatorial, conservation, and glassmaking capabilities to illuminate more fully than ever before the story of the delicate glass replicas of botanical specimens known as the

802 In “Botanical Wonders: The Story of the Harvard Glass Flowers,” The Corning Museum of Glass brings to bear its unique curatorial, conservation, and glassmaking capabilities to illuminate more fully than ever before the story of the delicate glass replicas of botanical specimens known as the

801 In “Botanical Wonders: The Story of the Harvard Glass Flowers,” The Corning Museum of Glass brings to bear its unique curatorial, conservation, and glassmaking capabilities to illuminate more fully than ever before the story of the delicate glass replicas of botanical specimens known as the

800 In “Botanical Wonders: The Story of the Harvard Glass Flowers,” The Corning Museum of Glass brings to bear its unique curatorial, conservation, and glassmaking capabilities to illuminate more fully than ever before the story of the delicate glass replicas of botanical specimens known as the

Learn more about the lives of Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka and how they created the Glass Flower models for Harvard University at the turn of the 19th century. Glassmaker and historian William Gudenrath interviews co-curators Dr. David Whitehouse, former executive director of The Corning Museum of