Abstract

BOOK REVIEW • A Sea of Glass: Searching for the Blaschkas’ Fragile Legacy in an Ocean at Risk

Highlights

  • Drew Harvell’s A Sea of Glass is at once a history, a memoir, and a status report on climate change—three interwoven narrative themes that tell the story of a quest

  • She brings a wealth of field and lab experience with living organisms to her collateral role as conservator of Cornell’s collection of 569 glass invertebrates. The compelling stories she tells here of her adventures, her deep knowledge of these animals, and her concerns for the future, are well worth reading. It begins with a discovery: in an old warehouse, long-stored boxes yielded an astonishing assortment of perfectly rendered glass models—a teaching collection from 150 years ago, a time when pickled specimens, watercolors, and line drawings were the standard fare for representing marine species away from their natural habitat

  • Each chapter contains color illustrations of living specimens and their glass doppelgangers, as well as some of the watercolor images that the glass artists used to prepare their sculptures. Harvell vividly describes her first-hand encounters with living examples of the glass invertebrates in their natural habitats

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Summary

Introduction

Drew Harvell’s A Sea of Glass is at once a history, a memoir, and a status report on climate change—three interwoven narrative themes that tell the story of a quest. The inspiration for this adventure is a collection of exquisite glass sculptures of marine invertebrates, fashioned by father and son artisans Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka late in the nineteenth century. As curator of the collection, Harvell’s mission in this book is to seek out living representatives of the species in her crystal menagerie to see how they are faring in today’s changing ocean.

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