Botanical model of an Autumn Crocus (Colchicum autumnale) by Robert Brendel

Botanical Model of an Autumn Crocus (Colchicum autumnale) par Robert Brendel.
Papier-mâché, wood.
Germany.
ca. 1880.
h. 17 in.

Botanical Model of a Autumn Crocus, or Colchicum (Colchicum autumnale), created around 1880 in the Robert Brendel workshops in Breslau : The Brendel workshops were founded in Breslau in 1866 by Robert Brendel. They quickly gained a great reputation during the last decades of the century for creating scientifically accurate botanical models of flowers and plants made from wood and papier-mâché. The numerous medals and awards the company received are a testament to its reputation and international scope: Moscow in 1872, Cologne in 1890, Chicago, especially at the famous 1893 World’s Fair, and later, in 1900, at the Paris Exposition Universelle, an award received by Reinhold Brendel, Robert’s son, who took over the company after his father’s death two years earlier. For nearly half a century, the Brendel botanical models were celebrated for their educational value and usefulness in teaching botany at universities in Europe and America.

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

The present model, listed as number 56 in the 1885 catalog, is part of the earliest series of Brendel flowers created in the late 1870s. Brendel flowers from this period were placed on a fine varnished wooden base with molding, a base that would later be replaced, under Reinhold Brendel, with a thicker, simpler blackened wooden base. The dating of this model is made possible not only by the old catalogs and manuals up to 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.

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.