A fuzzy bluish strawberry , a Pyrus communis mottled with unseemly blotches — rotting fruit is not normally call up of as beautiful . But just like the trees , flowers , and more attractive crop often featured in artwork , yield croak on the branch are a normal part of nature . By spotlighting the summer fruits that never make it to market , the Harvard Museum of Natural History is calling on people to examine them in a dissimilar sparkle .
The new exhibit , “ Fruits in Decay , " consists of astonishingly realistic glass models of apricot , plum , and other fruits in various stages of rot . Each intricate sculpture showcases the effect of a real - life agricultural disease . One branch is depict with peach leaf curl , a disease cause by the fungusTaphrina deformans , and a pear bears the telltaledark spotsof pear scab . There are more than 20 glass items on display .
“ yield in Decay " is the unexampled focus of the Harvard Museum ’s noted " Glass Flowers " gallery . Every slice in the drinking glass ingathering was crafted by either Leopold or Rudolf Blaschka , a Czech don - Word team descended from a line of glassblower stretching back to the fifteenth century . dynamic in the nineteenth and twentieth one C , they were known for creating realistic trash manakin of scientific specimen , 4300 of which are house at Harvard today . The rotten fruit models were sculpture by Rudolf Blaschka between the class 1924 and 1932 , at the remainder of his calling .
“ Rudolf Blaschka ’s last work centered on the creation of these models of diseased fruit , " Donald H. Pfister , curator of the Farlow Library and Herbarium of Cryptogamic Botany , said instatement . " They are the culmination of his lifelong attending to truth and innovation . They illustrate the effects of fungi as agent of disease in plant and point to their importance in agricultural systems . ”
“ Fruits in Decay " is open now at the Harvard Museum of Natural History and will be on thought through March 1 , 2020 .
