The Glass Flowers at Harvard

📕 These words aptly describe Harvard University's greatest tourist attraction, drawing nearly 100,000 visitors annually-the world-famous Ware Collection of Glass Models of Plants. To see them at Harvard is to be astounded; to see them brought to life by the extraordinary photographs in this stunning book is to know they are miracles of the glassmaker's art. The glass flowers were created during the years 1887 to 1936 by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka in Dresden, Germany, whose skills, obviously, were superlative. The collection is vast: together the Blaschkas made approximately 847 life-size models representing some 780 species and varieties of plants in 164 families, together with over 3,000 detailed models of enlarged flowers and anatomical sections of various floral and vegetative parts of the plants. The introduction to this book gives the full story of the creation of the models, and the flowers themselves are arranged by families in order of evolution from the simplest to the most complex. Each of the flowers illustrated is described as to its physical characteristics, where it grows, its economic importance (if any), and so forth. A glossary of botanical terms is included.