#  HUH Seminar - Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen 

 



####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **June 12, 2025** 

 12:00PM - 01:00PM EDT 

####  pin\_drop Location 

 **HUH Seminar Room 125, 22 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA**  



 

 



 

**Dr. Jessie Wei-Hsuan Chen**  
Postdoctoral Researcher in Knowledge and Art Practices  
Huygens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW)

**Title**: Scaling Up: Botanical Models and Shared Visions of Microscopic Observations in Plant Anatomy

   ![1. Plate from The anatomy of plants (1682) by Nehemiah Grew, digitized copy from the University of Michigan. 2.Botanical model Taxus by Robert Brendel, 1850–1900, photo by the Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, Leiden.](/sites/g/files/omnuum6796/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/2025-06/Chen_Images.jpg?itok=pn0SzZ_A) 

 

(Left) Plate from *The anatomy of plants* (1682) by Nehemiah Grew, digitized copy from the University of Michigan  
(Right) Botanical model Taxus by Robert Brendel, 1850–1900, photo by the Rijksmuseum Boerhaave, Leiden**Abstract**:   
Between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, didactic botanical models became a prevalent tool for education. In addition to bringing dimensions, models presented viewers with multiple perspectives to study and experience plants through representations using different scales. For example, models representing the morphology of plant species tend to be made in life-size, adding to their lifelikeness. Models representing plant anatomy, on the other hand, present a much larger-than-life perspective, enlarging the plant parts tens of times to give visual information that often requires using a lens or a microscope to see on a specimen. Models of plant anatomy, in many ways, represent a codified observation that many people agree upon throughout a long period of time, as the vision and experience of looking through a microscope is personal and can be varied.

In this talk, I present the work-in-progress of an article that investigates how botanical models represent the shared vision(s) of microscopic observations on a larger-than-life scale and in dimensions. It considers the long tradition of two-dimensional visual representations of plant anatomy that started in the seventeenth century, and how models may have adapted and modified such representations in the process of building and sculpting. This research in the history of art and science pays additional attention to how the several kinds of materials and techniques for making botanical models—namely, wax, papier mâché, and glass—supported and posed challenges for representing the larger-than-life perspective for model makers and viewers.



 

 



 

 See also:- [ Herbaria Seminar Series ](/calendar/taxonomy/term/20301)
 
 

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