Second on the Second-Glass Flowers

   Hi everyone. I hope April has started off well for you. I'd also like to wish a happy start to Passover to those who celebrate.  Since it is April 2, I'll be joining Bleubeard and Elizabeth for  Second on the Second .

  It's been several years since I visited the Harvard Museum of Natural History in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's not a huge museum, but it's one of my favorites. One of the permanent exhibits they have there is a room filled with glass flowers.  I should say it's a room filled with glass botany, even though it is often called  the glass flowers exhibit.

   Theses glass plants were made by Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka, a father and son  Czech team who worked for over 50 years from the late 1800's until early 1936, just a few years before the son passed. Between the 2 of them they made over 4,000 botanically correct glass plants and plant parts. They are really amazing because they look like real plants.

  For Second on the Second today I thought I would share some photos from blog posts in 2018 (the last time I visited) and 2016. I need to see if any of my friends want to go back for another visit to the museum because these really are amazing art pieces, and I'd love to go back again and see not only the glass botany pieces, but also the rest of museum. 

   These above photos are from my original post from May 2018 which you can find here: Glass Botany.

    Here's a few more views from June of 2016 when I posted Glass Flowers  and also a few more views from May of 2016 when I posted  Off on an Adventure.

    I thought these glass botanical pieces were perfect to share today since our new challenge at Art Journal Journey is Gillena's theme Trees are Awesome, Aren't They?

    This is a journal page I made back in  2016 where you can see a photo of both of the glass flower creators as well as Leopold's wife (who is also Rudolph's mother). 

    That's all for me today. I hope everyone is having a wonderful start to the new month. 

  

Blooming

Hi everyone. Here we are at the middle of another week and May is flying right by. Flowers have bloomed and the trees have all their leaves  and the weather has been mostly fantastic.

Today I have a painted page from my Nature Journal to share with you. I am linking up with Jo's challenge at Art Journal Journey. This challenge is Flora and Fauna. Thanks Jo for a great theme this month.

I have a weeping cherry in my garden that we call Al. It's called Al after my dad, as the tree was a gift from my co-workers when he passed. A couple of weeks ago it was blooming and I decided to document it in my Nature Journal.

And it has a very weird shape because one winter in an ice storm the top broke off, so now it grows fat but not tall. But when it blooms in early May, it is really beautiful.

I used paint, stamped images and some sketching to create my page.

I am also going to link up to the latest challenge, More Flowers, at Moo Mania.

Yesterday I went with some of my students on a field trip to Harvard Museum of Natural History.

The pride of the museum is their collection of glass flowers, made between 187-1936 by a father and son Czech glass working team, Leopold and Rudolph Blaschka. 

 They created some amazing flowers. I went there a couple of years ago with some students also, but they had a few things in the exhibit I don't remember seeing before.

This is view of the back wall of the exhibit looking over 2 of the cases that display the flowers.

Here are some of the glass flowers.They are scientifically correct for study.  Everything here is made of glass. It is AMAZING!

Any guess what this is? It's not a plant.

 A common fungus-mold.

They also had an exhibit of sea animals made of glass from this samee father and son team. I will show you those another day.

Have a great day!

And thanks for visiting my blog also.