Glass Flowers degradation

You've got this glass blower named Blaschka. Blaschka was making little colored replicas of sea urchins — people would bring back these little sea animals, he'd look at them under the microscope and do a model in blown glass. Someone said, well, can you try to do a flower? So he did, and he shipped it across the Atlantic, and it kind of came across and was broken, but they could still tell there was a lot of promise. So some rich woman over in the Back Bay gives a bunch of money to Harvard and they brought Mr. Blaschka over from Prussia. For the next 60 years he and his son would take plants like a cashew from Brazil or India, and they would copy it in glass in full color. They would also put it in the microscope and show you whether it's a monocotyledon or a dicotyledon. So it's a scientific exhibit and an art exhibit all at once.

Harvard Peabody Museum's Blaschka glass flowers — used to illustrate that glass science of the 1880s didn't optimize for long-term stability. 75% of the collection now off display due to degradation.

Which brings me to — did I mention the glass flowers? Does anyone know what the glass flowers are? You've lived here all your life and you don't know? It's the most interesting thing in the Boston area. If you're into art, it's at the Harvard Peabody Museum. I used to tell freshmen to get out of the classroom and go do something useful, and that they should go see some things. I'd always first ask, what's — the glass flowers. Only one out of 10 tour books in Boston even mentions the glass flowers. You ask people who've lived in Boston all their life, have you ever seen the glass flowers, and they say, huh?