Postcard – Karl Blossfeldt – Bladder fern

Postcards Karl Blossfeldt

The sculptor and photographer Karl Blossfeldt (1965-1932) studied under Moritz Meurer, among others, after an apprenticeship as an art caster at the Kunstgewerbemuseum teaching institute. From 1899 to 1930, he himself taught in a newly established ‘plant modelling’ class at the teaching institute and the United State Schools for Fine and Applied Arts.

During his time as Meurer's assistant, Blossfeldt began photographing plants for nature study in class. In order to enable his students to study plants more closely and also to show them as models for creative designs, he photographed plants and parts of plants, some of them greatly enlarged, to use them as ‘non-wilting’ models in class.

Motif - Bladder fern -

Young fronds of the maidenhair fern or bladder fern, Sign. 320-315

Karl Blossfeldt Collection at the Berlin University of the Arts

Copyright: public domain, Courtesy Berlin University of the Arts, University Archive

Dimensions of the print: 23.8 x 29.8 cm

Technique: Gelatin silver print