The Cinderella Story of the ‘Oaten Pipe Hydroid’

“There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion."

—Sir Francis Bacon

The Harvard Museum of Natural History is a venerable, creaky old building. Situated two minutes away from the concrete behemoth of the university's Science Center, the red brick walls and heavy wooden doors house the objects of a different age of investigation. Dead crustaceans curl in transparent jars filled with yellowing fluid; fragile butterflies hang pinned to corkboard on the walls. Ascending to the third story of this institutional curio-cabinet, take a left past the illustrious glass flowers in their dimly lit cases, past the rows of exotic sea shells and fading stuffed birds: Here, in this far corner of the museum, rare animals flash with brilliant light. Caught forever by the skill of two Dresden jewelers, each glass sea creature swims crystallized in a frozen moment, arrested for the fascination of the eye. In this case of transparent confections, one fragile beast appears the most delicate of all.

In its ocean environment, the Oaten Pipes Hydroid (Tubularia indivisa) twists and flutters in undersea currents–a hairy, bushy sort of animal that clings like an alien spider onto tolerant rocks. Stringlike tentacles abound. The hydroid's many pink hydranths gasp and pucker; tiny plankton swim into this cloud of greedy mouths. As a work of nature, it's beautiful and intricate. It's also a wild thing, a marine gargoyle, as far from our terrestrial knowledge and experience as any fiction of the screen.

Orderly and refined, Harvard’s glass model draws a sharp contrast with this fairy monster of the sea. The exquisite handiwork of Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, it is more an elegant alter ego than a true imitation. A much-pruned version of its messy referent, our Oaten Pipes Hydroid grows with dainty composure from rigid brown stems, opening into a set of decorous little flowers. Twelve, like those of the ancient Greek hydra––the only retelling of its beastly origins the Hydroid permits. It's so lovely, so refined, so ready for an introduction to polite society: The Eliza Doolittle of 19th century science, or perhaps the Blaschka's Cinderella.

Like that princess of humble origins, the Oaten Pipes Hydroid transformed itself through the efforts of a fantastic glassworker; however, the Hydroid's new ornamental status was bought at the cost of a certain authenticity. In this Arts column, I aim to illustrate how the hands of two jewelers finished its conversion from a tangled organic mass to a thing of gemlike beauty. I will also explain how their painstaking work fits into the story of science, creating order and meaning out of muddled reality. Like the Blaschkas, we'll turn our minds to the production of glass. As this project of reformation rooted itself in three glass technologies—the aquarium, the microscope, and lampworking—its history will be told in three interlocking acts, with prelude and conclusion.

The Sea and the Stars:

Our story begins in the waters of Portugal, near the mild climes of the Azores islands. It is 1853, and on what he would later describe as “a beautiful night in May,” Leopold Blaschka stands on the deck of a ship bound for America, looking out at the dark, reflective sea. He is 31 years old. Over the last three years, he mourned the death of his wife and father. He closed the family business–a glass jewelry workshop–to take a trip to a foreign country. But halfway to his destination, his ship becalmed near a series of remote islands in the Atlantic Ocean, leaving him with little to do but study the local jellyfish.

As Leopold stands watch over the sea’s inky mirror, he searches for their characteristic glimmer in the darkness. After the death of his spouse, Leopold sought solace in natural history, a time-consuming hobby. He’d seen illustrated invertebrates before, but examining the animals live, the jeweler became fascinated by the qualities that elude capture on paper––luminous transparent flesh, crystalline brilliance. Tonight, his patient attention is rewarded by the appearance of a school of jellies, glittering “as if surrounded by thousands of sparks...mirrored stars.” Leopold admires the lovely sight, blind to all that is about to occur, unaware that the series of events destined to bind him to these shimmering creatures is already, that same year, starting to unfold … .