Last week I gave you a Blaschka glass model from the Dead Zoo to have a go at identifying:

As you are probably aware from some of my previous posts on these rather fascinating objects, there can be quite a big difference between what the specimen was sold as in the Blaschka catalogue and what we might call the species today. In fact, this is a fairly common theme with many of the mystery objects, given the relentless progress being made in taxonomy since many museum collections were established.

In the case of Blaschka models this can cause a lot of confusion, since in some collections the names have been updated to match modern taxonomy, whereas in others the original name is still used. Most confusing is where the taxonomy was updated historically (and badly) so it no longer bears much relation to either the original name or the current name. That’s why the ordering numbers used by Ward are so useful, as it allows specimens to be tracked back to the catalogue (as long as the original number has survived).

Another way to figure out which species your Blaschka model might be is to look through the illustrations that the Blaschka’s used as the basis of their models. In the case of sea anemones that usually means checking the plates in Actinologia britannica. A history of the British sea-anemones and corals. by Philip Henry Gosse, 1860.

In this case Plate VIII has the goods:

As identified on Twitter by Ann Lingard and in the comments by Cam, the mystery object is of course Gosse’s Stomphia Churchiae or more recently Stomphia coccinea (Müller, 1776).

This is one of those times when it’s a real shame that the species has been synonymised, since Gosse named the species Churchiae in honour of Miss Anne Church, who had sent him a written description and figures of the species after recovering a specimen from a turbot net in Loch Long, Scotland. Thanks to Ann Lingard for sharing a link to an interesting blogpost on “The anemonizers of Scotland” touching on this (see also p.233 of Actinologia britannica).

Finally, with the original name, the number from the Ward catalogue comes easily, which in this instance is Nr.108.

I hope you enjoyed this diversion into the world of the Blaschkas – no doubt there will be more to come in future as I’ll be talking about them at a glass conference in a month’s time.

Last week I gave you this Blaschka glass model from the Dead Zoo to have a go at identifying:

It seems as though you’ve all managed to get your eye in with the Blaschka identifications, since there was a flurry of correct answers both in the comments on the blog and on Twitter.

Those exposed gills immediately let us know that this is a nudibranch sea slug. From there I thought it might prove more of a challenge, but by looking at the physical characteristics shown it quickly became obvious what we were looking at – at least when there is a handy catalogue to look at and provide clues.

In this case, the clue lay in the scientific name of the species: Polycera quadrilineata (O. F. Müller, 1776). As you might expect, it has many (poly-) horns (-cera) and four (quadri-) lines (-lineata), making the name helpfully descriptive. At least in this instance. The problem is that the name could be much less helpful if this model depicted the same species with a different morphotype.

In fact, it seems that there has been a separate species of Polycera hiding in plain sight until very recently. The wide variety of different colours and patterns associated with P. quadrilineata has meant that the new species Polycera norvegica Sørensen, Rauch, Pola & Malaquias, 2020 was only identified in last year, because it was lumped together with its more lineated cousin (that often lacks its stripes).

Separating these species relies on finer details than just overall appearance of course – the team that identified this cryptic critter did so on the basis of detailed morphological and genetic work that you can read about here.

It does help illustrate an ongoing problem faced when dealing with historic collections though. There have been a lot of species that have been similarly split, especially since molecular methods have become so much more accessibble. When working with old specimens it’s not unusual for these little bits of scientific progress to have been missed.

I’ve grumbled about this before, but it is a particular problem that can make dealing with Blaschkas so much more complicated. Fortunately there has been some work done on trying to match some of the more distinctly fishy taxonomy used by the Blaschkas to more modern versions, but there are still some impossible examples where the Blaschkas reproduced something from a source that had little bearing on real species. I promise I won’t set one of those as a mystery object.

Probably.

Last week I gave you this cute little Blaschka glass model of a squid to have a go at identifying:

Now that isn’t as easy as it might seem, since the Blaschkas spent over 20 years in their Dresden workshops making models of marine invertebrates, which included 50 different species of cephalopod. Moreover, many of these models did not survive the last 150 or so years, making comparable examples quite hard to find. On top of that, the taxonomy of the animals that the Blaschkas created models for has changed significantly in that time, meaning that everything gets very confusing when even trying to refer to particular models.

As such, when we’re working with Blaschka models we find it useful to refer to the order catalogue numbers established by H.A. Ward in 1878. Of course, that means we also have to rely on the old taxonomy used at the time and we still have problems when referrencing specimens made before 1878, since the Ward numbers hadn’t been established – plus the models offered in the various iterations of the catalogues changed to meet demand.

Much of that demand came from museums and universities all over the world, with the delicate lampworked models being mail ordered. The only way in which the person ordering could know what they were likely to receive in the post was to check out the scientific engravings of the animals that the Blaschkas faithfully reproduced in three dimensions. Usually there would be just a few references for any particular taxonomic group, so it probably wasn’t too difficult to get an idea of what to expect.

In the case of the squids, most were based on illustrations from Mollusques méditerranéens observés, décrits, figurés et chromolithographiés d’après le vivant – 1re partie: Céphalopodes de la Méditerranée by Jean-Baptiste Vérany, 1851, so that provides a good place to start looking.

It takes a while to get your eye in, but there are various details in each of the specimens that makes them more or less likely to be the illustration the model was based on. For this one there are a few that have similar proportions and colouring, but this also has what I like to refer to as the “double chin” (or perhaps “double neck” is more accurate). This feature is absent from most of the illustrations and therefore from most of the Blaschka squid models. Except this one.

Trawling through the Vérany book offers up a very good illustration providing the base for this model, the comparison spoiled only by photography done using my phone, which has a propensity for distorting the extremities of small 3D objects. Here’s what I think we’re dealing with:

This is what Vérany (and the Blaschkas) called Enoploteuthis Owenii and what is now known as the Eye-flash Squid, Midwater Squid or Abralia veranyi (Rüppell, 1844).

In the Ward versions of the Blaschka catalogue from 1878 and 1888 this model is listed under the number 554. So I offer my hearty congratulations to Adam Yates, who got both the species and the number. I hope you enjoyed this wander into the world of Blaschka models – I have other examples that I’ve identified recently, so I might just challenge you with another again soon…