: Collectors & Collections

Common Fritillary (Fritillaria meleagris) by E.F. Crowley.

Common primrose (Primula vulgaris) by E.F. Crowley.

Botany was a popular and fashionable activity in 18th and 19th century Britain. It was a safe recreation for women of leisure in the middle classes and was encouraged as an exercise that taught moral and religious lessons and prevented idleness.

In April 1927, two months after King George V officially opened the National Museum of Wales, Miss Gwendolen Crowley of Eastbourne wrote to the new museum's Keeper of Botany offering a collection of 200 botanical watercolour drawings.

Included with Miss Crowley's drawings were similar paintings by her mother, Mrs Curtis Crowley, her sister, Marion and an aunt, Mrs E. F. Crowley, bringing the total number of watercolours donated to 367.

Some years before, Gwendolen and Marion had started a Botanical Painting Club to illustrate as many wild flowers as possible and this collection was the result of that interest.

An inscription on the back of one of Marion's paintings of a Grape Hyacinth (Muscari comosum) states,

"Known also as Tassel-Hyacinth. See Curtis's Botanical Magazine."

This reference alludes to William Curtis (1746-1799), who taught at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London. Curtis wrote one of the earliest illustrated floras in England, Flora Londinensis (1775-87), which includes all the wild flowers growing within 10 miles of London.

Part of the work undertaken by the Museum is to maintain and conserve these delicate illustrations. The drawings have all been cleaned with vinyl erasers, stored in polyester envelopes to prevent abrasion and acid migration, before being rehoused in archival boxes designed specially for delicate material. The paintings are all original watercolours, measuring approximately 25cm by 18cm.

James Cosmo Melvill.

John Read le Brockton Tomlin.

Melvill's greatest prize specimen of Conus gloriamaris.

Placostylus

from Layard.

When the Melvill-Tomlin collection of molluscs was received by Amgueddfa Cymru in 1955, it was the second largest shell collection in private hands in the world.

The collection, begun by James Melvill in 1853 and passed to John Tomlin in 1919, represented all regions of the world and contained nearly half of all mollusc species known.

Melvill described and named over 1000 species new to science. Tomlin continued to add important specimens from across the world until his death in 1954.

On Tomlin's death in 1954, the Museum received the entire collection, his library and papers. Tomlin's allegiance with Amgueddfa Cymru is thought to have developed whilst teaching at Llandaff Cathedral School in Cardiff.

Housing the collection

The collection arrived in mahogany cabinets, but is today housed in a mobile storage racking system allowing the whole collection to be organised in a standard, systematic sequence, providing easy access to any taxonomic researcher working on the collection.

Long and slow curation

Modern documentation is achieved by entering information into a computer database, but in the past information was hand-written into large registers. Between 1978 and 1994, museum staff and volunteers verified, labelled, and secured specimens in the collection.

The information on the collections was then published for taxonomists around the world for further study. If the process had continued in such a way, then a full inventory would have taken another thirty years.

Computer databases completes the 'first' inventory

In 1995, a computer database was purchased allowing many people to enter data at the same time. Over twenty staff and volunteers have since been involved in making an inventory of the collection.

Since work begun in 1978, the first inventory has now been completed and any enquiries can now be answered accurately in minutes, rather than days or weeks.

The first inventory has been completed and any enquiries can now be answered accurately in minutes, rather than days or weeks. Over 786,000 shells have been added to the database.

New to science

Within this collection, there are thousands of very important specimens that are referred to as 'types'. These are the specimens that were new discoveries to science when collected, and were usually described, illustrated and named by the collector.

With many older collections, it is only the detective work of museum curators and taxonomists around the world that can help to verify this information. An electronic inventory makes this task much easier by making the entire database of a collection available to taxonomists worldwide.

Rudolf Blaschka c 1913. Image courtesy of the Botanical Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

A colourful model of the Portuguese Man-of-War sea creature - Physalia arethusa.

Actinophrys sol

Argonauta argo

Aurelia aurita

Doliolum mulleri

Amgueddfa Cymru holds a remarkable collection of beautifully detailed glass models of sea creatures made, in the latter half of the 19th century, by the uniquely skilled glass-worker and naturalist Leopold Blaschka.

Plants and animals for new museums

The second half of the 19th century was a time of great scientific discovery. New museums were opening to the public with their galleries displaying plants and animals from across the globe. For many groups of animals this was easily done. Birds, mammals, reptiles and even fish could be skinned and mounted to produce lifelike representations.

But what about soft-bodied animals, such as jellyfish and sea anemones, which were preserved in spirit? Their colours quickly faded and their shapes became distorted. The German glass-worker and naturalist Leopold Blaschka devised a solution to this problem. Together with his son, Rudolf, he established a successful business supplying glass models, mostly of marine animals, to museums worldwide during the latter half of the 19th century.

Leopold Blaschka

Leopold Blaschka was born in 1822 in Bohemia, now the Czech Republic. The Blaschka family, originally from Venice, were skilled workers in decorative glass, and Leopold showed artistic skill from an early age. Soon after leaving school, he joined his fathers' business crafting ornaments from metal and glass.

Leopold experimented with making glass models of flowers. Later, in 1863, he made models of sea-anemones which were exhibited in the Dresden Museum, Germany. These attracted the attention of curators of natural history museums who ordered sets of anemone models. Soon Leopold added models of jellyfish and snails to his repertoire. His son Rudolf was by this time working with him.

The Blaschkas were keen to keep up with the demand from museums. An early catalogue dating from 1871 listed nearly three hundred models. By 1888 the catalogue published by Henry Ward, their American agent, listed seven hundred!

The Blaschkas relied on illustrations in books as sources of reference for the glass animals. Many of the models are three dimensional representations of animals that they never saw in reality. However, in later years they increasingly based models on observations of real animals, either during field trips or from live specimens in specially built aquariums in their house.

Their early work was described in their catalogues as 'decoration for elegant rooms'. Comparison between early and later models made in the 1880s shows a distinct tendency towards scientific accuracy and away from the more showy earlier style.

Complex structures

The models varied greatly in complexity and their construction. Component parts were made from both clear and coloured glass, using a combination of glass blowing and lamp working techniques. Other materials were also used where appropriate. Fine copper wires reinforced or attached delicate tentacles and gills, and painted paper cleverly represented internal structures. They also made use of the actual shells of snails to which the modelled glass bodies of the animals were attached.

Production of the glass animals ended in 1890 when they were offered an exclusive contract to supply plant models for the Botanical Museum of Harvard University in the United States.

Leopold died in 1895, at the age of seventy-three. Rudolf continued working single-handedly until he retired in 1936. He died three years later at the age of eighty-two. By that time their collection consisted of 847 life-sized model plants and over 3,000 enlarged flowers and anatomical sections.

Their plant models remain on display at Harvard University to this day, attracting over 100,000 visitors annually.

The Glass model collection held at Amgueddfa Cymru were acquired in two batches. One hundred and thirty eight models were purchased from the Blaschkas by the old Cardiff City Museum in 1890. A further sixty two models came to the museum in 1927 from the Science Museum in South Kensington, London. Examples range from the early 'showy' forms, to more scientifically accurate examples of jellyfish and sea anemonies.

Leopold Blaschka, about 1895. Image courtesy of The Botanical Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

Rudolf Blaschka, about 1895. Image courtesy of The Botanical Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

A source picture of the Paper Nautilus (Argonata argo) model.

A broken Paper Nautilus model.

The Paper Nautilus model after conservation.

Amgueddfa Cymru holds around 200 beautifully detailed glass models of sea creatures created by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka. Made in the latter half of the 19th century, these intricate and extremely fragile items have been subject to years of open display and poor storage conditions, causing them to become damaged and dirty.

Irreplaceable works of art

These beautiful glass representations of marine animals were originally developed as educational models. Now they are now considered to be works of art, with a value that makes them irreplaceable.

Conserving the Blaschka models is fraught with difficulties. Given their age and complexity, great care has to be taken before attempting to clean or repair the models. The accumulation of decades of dirt, and damage from past repairs must be rectified without damaging or altering the original model.

The first stage of any conservation project is to understand what the object represents, and then to understand how it is made. The Blaschka models are an intricate blend of glass, paint and textured coatings that have been put together to show the textures and colours of the animal in life.

Shifting decades of dirt

Firstly, a suitable way of cleaning the models had to be found, then methods had to be developed for removing previous repairs. Finally, where required, the models needed to be repaired.

The models proved to be very difficult to clean. Surface paint had been applied to many of the specimens to add texture and colour. These had attracted surface dirt over the years, which was very hard to remove.

A range of solvents and cleaning solutions were carefully tested. Whilst water (with a non-ionic detergent) proved effective for removing the dirt, the surface paint was soluble and was in danger of being washed away. Eventually white spirit was found to shift the dirt without damaging the original surface paints.

Removing past repairs

Many of the specimens, especially the cephalopods, had become repeatedly broken and repaired over time. Many of these repairs were now discoloured or failing. Some parts, for example tentacles, had been re-attached in the wrong place.

The older repairs tended to use animal glue that could easily be softened in water, but this required care where the surface paint was present as this was water soluble. Other glues were dissolved by acetone. Once the old glues had been removed, the models then had to be reassembled.

Re-repairing correctly

The glass used to manufacture most of the models was very thin and brittle. Some of the collection had been broken into numerous pieces, and, in the past, detached pieces were fitted back in the wrong place.

Firstly, any new repairs made to the models needed to be reversible in the future. Epoxy resin based adhesives were quickly ruled out due to their strength, lack of reversibility and long-term stability problems. The consolidant, Paraloid B-72TM, was chosen because it is a stable material that remains reversible and can be removed if required. It is also forms a weak repair that will fail before the glass, reducing the chances of damaging the models further. This material is also slightly visible in certain lights, allowing future curators of the collection to identify previous conservation work.

The conservation work was developed to improve the visual appearance and integrity of the models, without further altering the original structure. The Blaschkas' glass models are an important collection, which is still used today. The work carried out on the collection will help ensure its continued survival for future generations to enjoy.

During the late 19th century, Leopola Blaschka (1822-1895) and his son Rudolf (1857-1929) produced beautifully detailed glass models of bizarre sea creatures for natural history museums and aquaria all over the world.

Their work has been hailed as: “an artistic marvel in the field of science and a scientific marvel in the field of art.”

Today, the Blaschkas seem remarkably contemporary: working as they did on the cusp of design, craft, art and industry.

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images from a selection of these remarkable glass models held at Amgueddfa Cymru.