In 1886, George Lincoln Goodale,

a Harvard professor and the first director of the school’s Botanical Museum,

 commissioned the Dresden, Germany–based father-and-son team of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka to make 847 life-size glass models representing 780 species and varieties of plants in 164 families as well as over 3,000 models of enlarged parts,

 

 the collection comprises approximately 4,300 individual glass models,

the amazing thing is, the more I look the more difficult it is to realise these are all glass,

 and now the good news the Glass Flowers are on permanent display in the Harvard Museum of Natural History where they draw nearly 200,000 visitors each year,

and even better still they have all been painstakingly rehoused to show them off in all of their splendour, the amount of work that has gone into this collection is mind boggling,

if you have time grab a coffee or two and watch this video of how the rehousing was done and of a modern day glass blower at work, truly fascinating.