GLASS

Fifty years ago a Harvard professor, travelling in Germany, walked down a crooked little street, and glancing through the window of a dingy old house glimpsed the perfection of a marvelous orchid. Because Professor Goodale was interested in botany he looked again and longer, and to his amazement found that the orchid was glass, so finely wrought that the most minute inspection revealed no flaw. It was then and there that the famous Harvard collection of glass flowers began.

Old Leopold Blaschka, whose handiwork that orchid is, was a glassblower, highly skilled in contriving the intricate models then as now used in teaching the sciences. His particular field was marine invertebrates, but as a pastime he made flowers with which to decorate his home. Persuaded by Harvard University he turned his full attention to glass flowers, and produced that unique collection which is now in the University Museum.

It is half a century since the first shipment of the flowers arrived in Cambridge, completely rained by the Custom agents. Old Leopold is dead, but his son, specially trained in botany and Zoology, carries on his father's work. The Harvard collection has become famous, and is unrivalled because the University has a monopoly of the work of Rudolph Blaschka, the only living man who knows the secret of making the flowers. The shipment of flowers just received may be the last, for Rudolph is now old, and he has trained no successor. It would be too much to comment on the passing of such artistry.