The art of the model maker.

Glass model of the colonial jellyfish Athorbia rosacea.

In the 1880s father and son Leopold (1822-1895) and Rudolf Blaschka (1857-1939) ran a small workshop in Dresden, Germany. At their height they had salesmen working across Europe and North America and as far a field as Japan and India. Initially, they made costume jewellery and glass eyes for the blind and for taxidermists who were enjoying a period of great demand and prosperity in the late 1800s. However, during 1863 they started to make exquisite glass models of marine invertebrates and flowers and these soon became their main business. The glass models of animals and plants produced by the Blaschkas are truly works of art and must surely rank as some of the very best ever produced.