Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/688

668 to the death of Leopold Blaschka in July, 1895, since the work now falls wholly on his surviving son.

One of the questions asked most often is whether there is no one besides Rudolf Blaschka who can make these models, or who can at least assist him in making them.

When the nature of the work is investigated, it becomes evident that the only answer to this question is a negative one. This is due, not so much to the existence of any one secret connected with the production of the flowers, as to the fact that they are the result of the keenest artistic perceptions, and of absolute scientific accuracy, combined with a wonderful delicacy of manipulation, and also with infinite patience! That the family possesses certain technical secrets is not to be denied; and not only these hereditary secrets, but many new devices of the art have been called into requisition by these two wonder-workers in whose hands the brittle substance has assumed a plastic character. It is not glass blowing but glass modeling which has produced these marvelous imitations of Nature. Glass of all degrees of fusibility has been used in their composition, and the colors have been subjected to many experiments: some are imparted to the glass while fused, some while cooling, and some are applied afterward. All the pigments used are mineral colors, as an attempt to supplement these with aniline tints failed utterly.

During the lifetime of the elder Blaschka, the father and son were inseparable in their Work; no one step, however slight, was taken by the one without first consulting the other. They worked at the same table, and Prof. Goodale, who alone has been privileged to see the process, confesses himself even more puzzled by their rapidity and skill after seeing the work than before!

The highest degree of excellence, too, has been attained in the use of cements and in the method of securing the models to the tablets; the reproduction of the widely different textures of leaf and petal is a marvel by itself, and such perfection can have been reached only by infinitely painstaking experiment and study. All these matters, as may readily be seen, are not easily acquired or imparted, and for these reasons the collection seems likely to remain, as it is at present, absolutely unique. The artists have been given every opportunity and advantage in the way of plants for study. A photograph of their pleasant home in Hosterwitz shows a large but unpretending house, surrounded by a garden in which American plants are grown. The Blaschkas have had the benefit, too, of the Royal Gardens at Pilnitz, the summer home of the court of Saxony, which is situated on the Elbe within a mile of Dresden.

The Blaschka house contains two studios, in which the models of the Ware Collection are exhibited to a number of invited guests