Last week Wednesday, I attended the Rose Café featuring guest speaker Professor Drew Harvell. Professor Harvell is leading an effort to restore Cornell’s Blaschka glass collection. The Blaschka Brothers were glass blowers who sold their collection of glass, aquatic animals to Cornell. These items were meant to be educational tools to teach students about aquatic life. However, due to time and use, many pieces were broken down and eventually stored away. Thanks to Professor Harvell, the pieces of art are being restored and put on display at Cornell.
This Rose Café was enjoyable for many reasons. For one, it is always gratifying and uplifting to someone work on something that he or she is so passionate about. Professor Harvell’s love for marine ecology is very infectious and even inspired me to go visit the Blaschka collection myself. The amount of detail that each piece contains is unreal and is unlike anything else I have seen before. If you have not seen the collection yet, I would highly recommend at least stopping by. I also enjoyed being able to watch the movie she made about the collection. It was interesting to learn about the origins of these glass pieces and the effort it took to craft them.