About a year ago I stumbled upon an article about the life and work of two master glass blowers of the 19th century, father and son Blaschka. I was so fascinated by the pictures of their creations and I'd like to share some impressions with you (yes, the models below are made of glass!).
Born 1822 in Bohemia, the glass blower and goldsmith Leopold Blaschka moved to Dresden, Germany with his second wife and his only son Rudolf. Since the 1880s father and son focused on creating elaborate glass models of invertebrates and flowers for study and decoration purposes - until then it was difficult or impossible to preserve the originals. Over the years, hundreds and hundreds of models were made and sold worldwide to collectors and universities alike.
Rudolf Blaschka died childless in 1939, taking the art of creating such fragile models to his grave.
Well, just by looking at the picture above I am still simply fascinated by how real the models look and how difficult it must be to make them. I'll try to find more information about this special knowledge of making the models the Blaschkas are said to have had (I read on the Internet that even now scientists do not know in detail how the models were made to be so elaborate). By the way: there is an exhibition of models and photographies . The nearest stations will be Reutlingen (15th Nov 2008-15th Jan 2009) or Munich (12th Feb 2009-30th April 2009) and I'll try to make one of the two.
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