Glass sea creatures

The glass sea creatures (alternately called the Blaschka sea creatures, glass marine invertebrates, Blaschka invertebrate models, and Blaschka glass invertebrates) are works of glass artists Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka. The artistic predecessors of the Glass Flowers, the sea creatures were the output of the Blaschkas' successful mail-order business of supplying museums and private collectors around the world with sets of glass models of marine invertebrates.

Between 1863 and 1880, the Blaschkas – working in Dresden – executed at least 10,000 of these highly detailed glass models, representing some 700 different species.^[1]

A number of large collections of the models are held by museums and other academic institutions. Harvard's Museum of Natural History exhibits many of the Blaschka's glass creations, and its Museum of Comparative Zoology hold 430 items in the Blaschka Glass Invertebrate Collection and display about 60 at any given time.^[2] Cornell University has about 570 items in its collection and has restored some 170 of these,^[3] with many others in its collection stored at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York.^[4] The largest collection in Europe, of 530 pieces, is at Ireland's Natural History Museum. Other holdings include the Boston Museum of Science; the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, Natural History Museum in London, Redpath Museum of McGill University in Montreal, Natural History Museum in Geneva, and both Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin in Ireland;^[5] Hancock Museum in Newcastle upon Tyne, England; The Grant Museum of Zoology^[6] in London, and Aquarium-Museum in Liège, Belgium,^[7] and Melbourne Museum, in Melbourne, Australia.