The Brooklyn Rail

The father-son glassmaking duo of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka is best known for their vast collection of plant models in the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Produced over a fifty-year period from the end of the nineteenth century through the first half of the twentieth, the Blaschka “glass flowers” as they’re known represent nearly eight hundred plant species in over four thousand intricate, visually stunning models. Spineless: A Glass Menagerie of Blaschka Marine Invertebrates, the current exhibition at the Mystic Seaport Museum, highlights another body of work, the glassmakers’ meticulous, scientifically precise marine invertebrates. On view alongside sketches, photographs, watercolors, and journals documenting these notoriously difficult-to-depict creatures, as well as wet specimens preserved in jars, the Blaschka models offer insight into the duo’s practice and demonstrate early efforts to better understand the ocean.

Abundant and fascinating, marine invertebrates include a diverse group of animals, such as sponges, jellyfish, mollusks, sea squirts, and crustaceans. Documenting invertebrates is difficult in any medium. When wet, their colors are vibrant and can even present as transparent, and their soft bodies make it challenging to capture their shapes. Modern innovations in film and photography offer useful tools, but even these can flatten the subjects. When removed from water, the colors and shapes of invertebrates change altogether like deflated balloons. Spineless highlights the challenges artists, explorers, and maritime-enthusiasts have in representing these creatures.

Like the many sailors whose journals and sketches are included in the show, the Blaschkas’ foray into rendering invertebrates began with curiosity. Leopold (1822-1895), the father, observed the bioluminescence of sea creatures during a transatlantic journey in 1853, documenting the experience in his journal. He began making glass invertebrates in Dresden, Germany in the 1860s, using skills developed from the family’s three-hundred-year legacy of glassmaking. His son, Rudolf (1857-1939), helped Leopold as an apprentice and took over the practice after the elder Blaschka’s death in 1895. Employing the lampworking method (in which glass is melted with an oil lamp, or torch in modern days, and then blown or shaped with tools), the duo created meticulous, scientifically accurate representations as educational objects that could be easily purchased through catalogs. They used both colorless and colored glass, adding paint to achieve the remarkable hues and patterns of each specimen.

Included among their buyers was Harvard University for what was then known as the Harvard Botanical Museum, which amassed a collection of over four hundred terrestrial and marine invertebrates. These make up the bulk of the forty examples on view at the Mystic Seaport Museum. The invertebrate models in Spineless are identified by their scientific names (both at the time the Blaschkas made them and the present-day name determined as scientific knowledge increased). The condition of the invertebrates in the exhibition is remarkable. While the models were not considered art objects when they were first made, museums and institutions often stored them for educational use. Having been under this careful ownership for over a century, the models show minimal paint loss or breakage.

The details of each model are astonishing. Vibrant blue sea slugs (Glaucus atlanticus) seem to glow from within. Their thin, feathery appendages branch out like a sunray. Equally minute appendages project from a green sea slug (Stiliger ornatus). Nearby, impossibly small sea squirts (Clavellina lepadiformis) stand at just a few centimeters tall. Depicted in a trio, the nearly transparent, cylindrical creatures are angled as if flowing underwater. Visitors can see live sea squirts in an underwater film projected onto the wall next to the Blaschka models.

Perhaps the most stunning examples are the octopuses. The exhibition features several, including glass models, photographs, and a wet specimen resembling a jumble of arms. The Blaschka octopuses demonstrate their mastery of glassmaking. Dozens of tiny suckers line the bottom of the eight arms, which curve into seemingly weightless forms. A closer look reveals the artists’ treatment of paint, having carefully layered each color to match that of their subject. Some octopuses appear to be propelling their bodies upwards, their skin pushing against the water. Others seem to float gracefully, as if relaxing in the current.

Depictions of invertebrates by contemporary artists are also included. A breathtaking piece entitled Glass Moon Jelly (2023) made specifically for the exhibition by artist Emily Williams, parallels both the beauty and fragility of the natural world with delicate tentacles and lacelike lines delineating the jellyfish’s body, all made in clear glass. Joining Williams’s piece is Marine Specimen Collection (2018), a glass cabinet of curiosities by Steffen Dam that features eight cylindrical jars. Made entirely of glass, each jar contains fictional sea creatures, such as jellyfish and shrimp-like invertebrates resembling the wet specimen in jars on view nearby.

In the broader context of the maritime museum, the exhibition draws attention to the importance of protecting marine health. The museum sits along the Mystic River, where new species continue to be introduced, brought in by ships traveling from around the world. At the museum, marine biologist Dr. James T. Carlton, Director Emeritus of the Williams College-Mystic Seaport Maritime Studies Program, and co-curator of Spineless along with Krystal Rose, studies these aquatic interlopers to better understand the species living in the waters. Dr. Carlton’s work is part of a larger initiative the museum is undertaking to recognize the impact of seafaring activities on the planet’s marine ecosystem. Some of the invertebrates in Spineless can be found in the river outside the museum.

While less known than their glass flowers, the invertebrates were integral to the Blaschkas’ careers and their introduction to an international audience. After purchasing invertebrate models, Harvard commissioned the Blaschkas to make botanical ones and in 1890 began an exclusive, ten-year contract to produce plants and flowers, which also marked the end of their invertebrate practice. This relationship continued throughout the Blaschkas’ careers, resulting in the vast, celebrated collection of plants Harvard now holds. From educational material to art objects, the sea creatures continue to inspire curiosity and offer insight into the myriad species living just below the water’s surface.