Martha Glowacki’s Natural History, Observations and Reflections Martha Glowacki’s Natural History | Página 14

Figure 8. Wenzel Jamnitzer (German, 1508–1585), Silver writing box with animal casts, ca. 1560/1570, silver, 9 x 4 x 2 1 / 3 in.,
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien.
nurture on British soil the success of seeds indigenous
to the New World (sent by Bartram as enclosures with
his letters) is captured with the language of anticipation,
uncertainty, and joy with which Collinson describes
the results of his attempts at cultivating growth: “For
I waited almost all my / lifetime for to get this / Rare
flower / I Read of it & Seen It / Figur’d in Books, but
/ despaired of ever / Possessing it.” Thus cut-up and
displayed, with the insertion of Glowacki’s enjambments
and pauses, Collinson’s correspondence is loosened from
its original purpose and allowed to reside in a more
lyrical realm. The letter here reads like a visual poem;
the final words, “Possessing it,” reside alone. They are
separated from Glowacki’s cast plant and from Col-
linson’s other words that precede it. This placement
suggests that verdure may find a way to resist being fully
domineered. However ecstatic the British botanist may
have been at the success of this one bloom (the word
“rapture” in Glowacki’s title derives from the Latin
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Martha Glowacki’s Natural History, Observations and Reflections
raptura—which originally meant abduction or rape, but
around 1600 the word began to be applied to a state of
mental transport), man’s desire to obtain and contain
nature may ever exceed his grasp.
That there are intimations of death in Glowacki’s work
cannot be denied. Where graphic technologies such
as drawing and printmaking may be seen to perform a
kind of mortification because they lack a visual vocabu-
lary for describing growth, one of this artist’s preferred
techniques—casting from life—demands obliteration
of the specimen. The sixteenth-century master of this
procedure, Wenzel Jamnitzer, sacrificed not only flowers
and stems but also snails and salamanders when he fired
his molds (Figure 8). In Glowacki’s work, metalized
insects and bones not only hint that fidelity to nature is
linked to nature’s demise; they also operate generatively
to suggest how fragility gives way to stability, and vice
versa. The inside of her mirror box, Lacuna, is scattered