Botanical Model of a Carnation (Dianthus caryophyllus) by Robert Brendel

Papier-mâché, wood.
Germany.
ca. 1880.
h. 14,2 in.

Botanical model of a carnation (Dianthus caryophyllus), designed ca. the 1880 in the Robert Brendel workshops in Breslau.

Founded in Breslau (now in Poland) in 1866, the Brendel workshops, named after their founder Robert Brendel, became famous by the end of the 19th century for their scientifically accurate botanical models of flowers and plants made of wood and papier-mâché. After Robert Brendel's death in 1898, his son Reinhold Brendel took over the management of the workshops, and by then, the Brendel models were at the height of their fame, adding a medal awarded at the 1900 'Exposition Universelle' in Paris to a long list of distinctions won under Robert Brendel’s leadership (Moscow in 1872, Cologne in 1890, and especially Chicago in 1893). Brendel botanical models were celebrated for their educational value and their use in teaching botany in universities across Europe and America.

Rare and fragile, most of the Brendel flower models are now preserved in natural history museums or in the collections of prestigious universities. There are notable collections at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C., at the universities of Bologna and Florence, the National Museum in Liverpool, and the University of Lille.

This model is part of the oldest series of Brendel flowers, designed in the late 1870s. At that time, the flowers still rested on a fine, varnished and molded wooden base, which was later replaced, under Reinhold Brendel, with a thicker, darkened wooden base. This dating is made possible not only by the old catalogs and manuals from 1885 but also by the models preserved at the University of Bologna, with varnished wooden bases, which entered the university’s collections in December 1880.

The carnation, Dianthus caryophyllus, is listed as number 85 in the 1885 Brendel catalog and belongs to Section VI, dedicated to Zierpflanzen (ornamental plants).

Sources

Alexander Tschirch, Erläuterungen zu den botanischen Modellen von Robert Brendel, Berlin, 1885 ; Preis-Verzeichniss der von R. Brendel, Berlin W., Kurfürstendamm 101, angefertigten botanischen Modelle, Berlin, 1885 ; Grazinia Fiorini, Luana Maekawa and Peter Stiberc, ‘Save the Plants : Conservation of Brendel Anatomical Botany Models’, Florence, 2008.