Glass, Jelly, and Jewels
Final Thoughts
For all this column’s previous musings on the Blaschkas’ “Oaten Pipes Hydroid,” something still puzzles. Developed from Allman’s illustration, the Hydroid’s two enlargement models are fairly close interpretations. But let’s look closely at the drawing of the "Hydroid" itself: Despite the glass figure’s elimination of much of Tubularia indivisa’s formal chaos, the animal in Allman’s plate writhes in sinuous curves. It branches into tiny buds; its heads turn in all directions. But the Hydroid suggests not a twisting arbor but a rigid bouquet: puzzling considering the Blaschkas’ otherwise faithful adherence to Allman’s plate.
Of course, the origins of this decision lie partly in economic necessity—slightly bent wires are quicker to produce than a curvilinear mass. As demand for their products increased, the Blaschkas began assembling animals more efficiently. Nevertheless, this utilitarian explanation feels insufficient. In Allman’s plate, most of the Hydroid heads lack sporosacs—and from the minority of heads that have them, they often dangle in a group of three. Allman’s enlargement, too, features a triplet chain. In the Blaschka Hydroid however, sporosacs fall in glittering pairs from nearly every flower, a multiplication of symmetry that required tedious, repetitive work to achieve. Even their microscopic model features two links and not three. This excess of twinning suggests some hidden intention on the part of the Blaschkas. Why this insistence on symmetry? For answers, we turn again to the legacy of the microscope.
Fragility and Fluidity
At a philosophical level, the union of glass with aquatic animalia feels like a fated match: on the one hand, the liquid medium; on the other, the lives lived in liquid—the artisan’s breath like the breath of God, giving organic form to what was once silica dust. There’s a metaphorical biology to glass that corresponds well with the biology of sea life. Both are keenly involved with the question of which forms are efficient and well-adapted, and thus most frequently brought into being.
The glass we buy is still: fragile and calm, content to hold forever its frozen form. But the glass of the artist is wild and molten. A hot, thick, slow-moving liquid, its primary allegiance is to gravity. It glows and blazes; it cannot be touched directly with the hands. Craftsmen spin globs of it on rods, whirling the sticky mass constantly to ensure it won’t sag. They blow into the soft glass through hollow pipes, and their breath expands it into bulbous forms. Like jellyfish, sea anemones, and the heads of hydroids, forms worked in glass tend towards the symmetric and the rounded. These are the easiest forms to produce—and the strongest.
On Lithography, Steam, and Taxes
In 1853, Englishman Philip Henry Gosse published “A Naturalist’s Rambles on the Devonshire Coast,” a book about marine life illustrated with gorgeous, vivid lithographs. A year later, in its sequel, he introduced the public to the concept of “The Aquarium,” with prints that were even more lush and spectacular. Well in the throes of a passion for natural history, the Victorian public went wild. As historian Lynn Barber wrote, a few years after the publication of Gosse’s books, “it was impossible to visit the seaside without tripping over parties of earnest ladies and gentlemen, armed with a book by Mr. Gosse and a collection of jamjars, standing knee-deep in rock-pools and prodding at sea-anemones.”
Prior to Gosse, the natural history of invertebrates had been a rather neglected field. To enhance their appeal, his works promoted the fun of collecting creatures that Gosse described as living jewels. A ring of jellyfish was a “coronet of sparkling diamonds”; a bivalve held up as “the pearl of the Orient”; a genus of worm hailed as “liveried in emerald and gold.” Gosse’s glittering marketing succeeded, but perhaps too greatly. The British coasts, ravaged by armies of greedy hoarders, sustained severe ecological damage, a fact that would cause the environmentally-minded author deep regret.
The Cinderella Story of the ‘Oaten Pipe Hydroid’
“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."
—Sir Francis Bacon