While academic archives contain official records from University leadership such as the Board of Trustees, Office of the President, or Deans, they also often include an eclectic mix of student and alumni records, personal manuscript collections, and a few mysteries thrown in for good measure. For the month of July, we thought we’d explore one of TARC’s favorite mysteries, which was solved in 2007 and has to do with some fascinating marine creatures made of glass. It seems only right that we dive into this oceanic enigma during the height of summer – consider this our archival beach vacation!
The creators of the objects in question are Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, German artisans working out of Dresden, who are best known for their work creating glass botanical specimens for what would become Harvard University’s Ware Collection of Glass Plants. Before their foray into flowers, however, the father and son team produced hundreds of models of both marine and terrestrial invertebrates which were sold by catalog in North America. Produced between the 1860s-1880s, the animal specimens provided crucial teaching tools for universities and scientific institutions, as their glass bodies did not wither and lose their colors like fleshy specimens did when preserved in chemical-filled jars.
Some of the Blaschkas’ glass sea creatures – including a Portuguese man o’ war, a snail, a cuttlefish, and a sea cucumber, among others – came to Tufts in 1885, purchased by P.T. Barnum for exhibition in the Barnum Museum of Natural History. Famously the home of the beloved remains of Jumbo the Elephant, the museum stood on the site of the current Barnum Hall, and was destroyed by fire in 1975. The delicate Blaschka models were presumed lost in the fire along with many other collection materials. It was not until 2006, when Andrew McClellan, Professor of art history and Dean of academic affairs for Arts and Sciences, brought to light a letter in the Archives that suggested another fate for our saltwater friends.
Dated 1965, the letter was written by Barnum Museum curator Russell Carpenter to the Corning Museum of Glass in New York, asking if they would take Tufts’ Blaschka models as a loan to their collections. It seems that the loan documentation was lost in the aftermath of the Barnum Museum fire, and the sea creatures remained in the Corning Museum’s holdings indefinitely. McClellan’s work to locate the Tufts Blaschka models was further complicated by the fact that the Corning Museum had also lost many of their records in a flood in 1972, making it difficult for current staff to locate which models belonged to us. Luckily, though, our models were identified and restored by the experts at Corning, before being returned to TARC in 2007. Then, in 2008, several more Blaschka invertebrates were discovered in a closet in the Dana Biology Lab and subsequently transferred to TARC.
Despite their various adventures in the 140 years since they were gifted to Tufts, TARC is happy to report that our twenty-two glass invertebrates are now resting peacefully in climate-controlled storage with the goal of providing many more years of scientific and artistic insight to researchers. Though only rarely brought out of storage due to their delicate nature, these gorgeous creatures have become staff favorites at TARC and are perhaps as close to the ocean as the Archives are going to get this summer!
Sources:
Department of Biology Records, 1960 -- 1989. Tufts University. Tufts Archival Research Center. Medford, MA.
UA152 Department of Biology Records collection file.
“Blaschka Glass Invertebrates: Museum of Comparative Zoology.” Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. Accessed June 24, 2025. https://www.mcz.harvard.edu/blaschka-glass-invertebrates.
“Life and Work of the Blaschkas - Cornell Collection of Blaschka Invertebrate Models.” Cornell University Library Digital Collections. Accessed June 24, 2025. https://digital.library.cornell.edu/collections/blaschka/life.
Ragovin, Helene. “The Creatures in the Closet.” Tufts Journal, February 18, 2009. https://tuftsjournal.tufts.edu/2009/02_2/corner/01/.