Botanical Model of a Wild Rose (Rosa canina) by Reinhold Brendel

Papier-mâché and wood.
Germany.
ca. 1900.
h. 18,11 in.

Botanical model of a Rosa canina, or dog rose, wild variant of the common rose. This replica was made in papier-mâché and painted in the early 20th century at Reinhold Brendel's workshops in Grünewald, Germany.

The Brendel workshops, founded in 1866 in Breslau (now Wroc?aw, Poland) by Robert Brendel, became famous at the end of the 19th century for their botanical models, made of wood and papier-mâché, which were scientifically accurate replicas of plants, and flowers especially. Reinhold Brendel, the son of Robert Brendel, took over the direction of the workshops after his father’s death in 1898. Under his leadership, the Brendel workshops won a medal at the famous 1900 Paris World Exposition, adding to a long list of accolades obtained under his father's direction (Moscow in 1872, Cologne in 1890, and especially Chicago in 1893). Brendel’s botanical models were highly regarded for their didactic value, particularly in teaching botany at universities in Europe and America.

This model of a Rosa canina corresponds to the second major period of flower production of Brendel, under the direction of Reinhold Brendel — evidenced by its base made of black-painted wood, more austere and modern than the older bases made of thinner, varnish-brown sculpted wood. In accordance with its didactic purpose, this model shows two successive stages of the Rosa canina : a cross-section of the flower still in formation, and a representation of the fully bloomed flower.

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

The Rosa canina, known as Hundsrose (dog rose) in German, appears as number 34 in the 1900 Brendel catalog, in Section VI dedicated to Zierpflanzen (ornamental plants).

Sources

Alexander Tschirch, Erläuterungen zu den botanischen Modellen von Robert Brendel, Berlin, 1885 ; Reinhold Brendel, Preisliste über Botanische Modelle gefertigt und herausgegeben von R. Brendel, Berlin, 1900 ; Grazinia Fiorini, Luana Maekawa, and Peter Stiberc, 'Save the Plants : Conservation of Brendel Anatomical Botany Models', Florence, 2008.