Glass Flowers

The Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants (or simply the Glass Flowers) is a collection of highly realistic glass botanical models at the Harvard Museum of Natural History in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Created by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka from 1887 through 1936 at their studio in Hosterwitz, near Dresden, Germany, the collection was commissioned by George Lincoln Goodale, the first director of Harvard's Botanical Museum, and was financed by Mary Lee Ware and her mother Elizabeth C. Ware.^[1] It includes 847 life-size models (representing 780 species and varieties of plants in 164 families) and some 3,000 detail models such as of plant parts and anatomical sections. The collection comprises approximately 4,400 individual glass models representing over 830 plant species. Among the models, 64 glass sculptures depict the effect of fungi, in particular plant diseases of Rosaceae by phytopathogens.^[2]