Neither pickled nor dried but preserved in pure glass

ANOTHER LIFE:THE STRAND IN September is suddenly scoured clean of human activity not that, this summer, there were many people doing very much.

The gleaming sweep of sand reflects a sky piled high with thunder-clouds and the ocean is suddenly enormous and important, filled to the horizon with things we still don’t know.

Many have to do with the tiniest of ocean creatures, bound up with elemental cycles of the planet. We appreciate a lot now about plankton’s role in climate control, and the names of its drifting organisms grow daily more familiar. But along with its plants and animals, viruses and bacteria, comes new focus on a fifth compartment of plankton life in the ocean that few of us had heard of – the protists.

These single-celled, plant-like creatures, in a myriad different forms, produce massive amounts of oxygen and absorb much of the ocean’s carbon dioxide yet we know perhaps less than 1 per cent of their species and even less about their lives. This gives them top priority in the three-year research programme of the ship called Tara Oceans, now somewhere in the Bay of Biscay on the first leg of sailing round the world.

Among its multinational team of scientists is Dr Emmanuel Reynaud of UCD, an expert in conjuring up big, twirlable computer-screen images of microscopic creatures freshly dredged from the deep. Some, no doubt, will look very like the image on the right, a protist called a radiolarian. Radiant and exquisite, it is the product, not of 21st century technology, but of late 19th century craftmanship in glass and glue.

It is one of the astonishing treasures of Ireland’s Natural History Museum – one of the largest collections in the world of marine glass models made by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, father and son.

In the 19th century, the museums of the world and their collections of specimens were hubs of public enthusiasm for natural history.

But while much of nature could be acceptably preserved and put on show, whole realms of “soft” life could only be pressed dry or pickled in jars in back rooms, still useful to science but quite robbed of charm for any wider audience. It was the inspiration of the Blaschkas to produce models in glass so precise in scale, natural colour, form and detail that they would satisfy science as well as a public eager for beauty.

They came from a long line of skilled glassmakers with 15th century origins in Murano, the “glass island” of Venice. In their studio in Dresden in Germany in the later 1800s, they began producing their replicas from natural history books, notably with sea anemones that spread their reputation afield to museums and aquaria.

Snails and jellyfish followed, along with some 4,400 exquisite flowers still on display in Harvard’s Botanical Museum.

In 1878 their fame reached the Natural History Museum in Dublin, which over the next 10 years commissioned 530 models for display: not only the invertebrates that divers might see, such as tentacled worms and anemones, sponges, squid and cuttlefish, a fabulous octopus, but some models enlarging microscopic creatures to display their beauty and complexity. The radiolarian, for example, was brought up to 15cm by 17cm.

The delicacy and inherent fragility of the Blaschka models means that many have been broken or lost across the world, and those surviving present great challenges in cleaning and conservation.

They were made from different types of glass, some of them unstable, and often embody unpredictable materials, such as copper wire, soluble paints and gelatine coatings, papier mache, and animal glues that have degraded with time and sunlight. In the Dublin museum, some have spent more than a century gathering dust in cases under a glass roof, in variable temperatures.

A skilled glass conservator, Lorna Barnes, has been working with the models at intervals since 2001, trying where possible to extend their lives.

Moving them about is, as the museum’s keeper, Nigel Monaghan, puts it, “very scary stuff”, and the achingly slow drive that took the radiolarian, with a score of other models, from their Merrion Street to the temporary Dead Zoo At Large exhibition in Collins Barracks, is remembered by Barnes as a fraught experience.

Another of its kind may be enjoyed, in full revolving glory, at the website of the Natural History Museum in London (http://url.ie/2eqt), a presentation that makes one long to see them all beautifully spotlit, like the jewels they are.

Apart from those in the Collins exhibition and others held in university zoology departments, the 300 normally on display at Merrion Street will be viewable again when the museum’s repairs are completed later this year.

To follow the Tara expedition go to www.oceans.taraexpeditions.org.

EYE ON NATURE

Walking at Old Head, Co Mayo, I saw three grey phalaropes near the base of the cliffs. They were very tame, showed no fear and were nearly at our feet as we walked along.

Joe Liddane, Louisburgh, Co Mayo

They were probably blown in by recent gales when on migration from breeding grounds in the Arctic to wintering quarters on West African coasts.

A sparrowhawk set off our house alarm while capturing a wood pigeon. One must have hit the glass of the French windows. The garden goes quite silent as the small birds take cover when the Killiney Hill sparrowhawk surveys the scene.

Dee Neeson, Killiney, Co Dublin

While walking in the Slieve Bloom Mountains at the end of August, I came across a pool with a large number of tadpoles.

Paul Walsh, Dún Laoghaire

They may not develop into frogs because of adverse conditions.

Peace? I saw a collared dove with a twig in its mouth on a Dublin Street on August 29th. Have the floods abated or has global warming driven them mad?

Robin Harte, Strawberry Beds, Dublin 20

Michael Viney welcomes observations at Thallabawn, Carrowniskey PO, Westport, Co Mayo. E-mail: viney@anu.ie. Include a postal address.