After coming across the Harvard collection of glass invertebrates, I went looking for more information about the Blaschka models. I came across the book Sea of Glass: Searching For The Blaschka’s Fragile Legacy In An Ocean At Risk, by Dr. Drew Harvell. Harvell is a professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Cornell, and the book chronicles her discovery of the Cornell collection of Blaschka models. While reading Sea of Glass, I discovered that Leopold Blaschka communicated frequently with Ernst Haeckel, who would have been the titan of natural history and science at the time. Apparently it was Haeckel who encouraged Leopold to begin making watercolor sketches of the marine creatures, so as to get their vivid colors and particular forms as accurate as possible before committing them to glass. It was funny to see this come full circle, and I could sense the same kind of excitement in Dr. Harvel’s words that I felt when first discovering Haeckel’s drawings at MBL.
Dr. Harvel also talks about meeting David Brown, a videographer who had worked as part of the Cousteau Society. Their conversation sparked the idea for a documentary film that would follow Dr. Harvel on a quest to see how many of the Blaschka creatures still exist in the ocean today. Their film, Fragile Legacy, was released in 2015. Here is the trailer.
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