RUDOLPH BLASCHKA - AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED 04/02/1938 - HFSID 154891

RUDOLPH BLASCHKA
Glassmaker Rudolph Blaschka wrote this letter from Hosteritz, Germany in 1938, the year before his death, to thank the recipient for a letter and to say that his response was delayed because "we both were troubled with serious illness since over two months".
Autograph Letter signed: "Rudolph Blaschka", 1 page, 5¾x7¼. Hosteritz, near Dresden (Germany), 1938 April 2. To "Dear Mrs. Newland", in full: "Your very kind letter of January has given us much pleasure and should have been replied at earlier date, But as we both were troubled with serious illness since over two months, as to myself combined with a trouble of my eye-sight, my correspondence got entirely delayed. Mrs. Blaschka thanks you for the very nice hand-kerchief so kindly enclosed in your letter. She would have been glad to send you a photograph of herself as you like to receive it, but she wants to get a new photograph as soon as she will perfectly well again. So she hopes to send you one in the course of the spring. She joins me in best wishes to you, Very sincerely yours". Rudolph Blaschka (1857-1939)and his father Leopold (1822-1895)were descended from a long line of glassmakers, originally from Venice and then arriving from Bohemia to work in Germany. Rudolph and his father called themselves "natural history artisans," because their specialty was creating intricate and highly realistic glass models of living creatures, produced on commission. Their most famous achievement was the collection of over 3,000 plant models owned by Harvard University's Museum of Natural History, formerly called the Ware Collection and now known simply as the Glass Flowers. An average of 160,000 persons a year come to view the Glass Flowers, but there are fine examples of the Blaschka's work elsewhere, notably Cornell University's Marine Invertebrate collections. Fold crease, not near signature. To this day, nobody has successfully replicated the detailed accuracy of the Blaschka glass. Fine condition.