Cirsium Canum

The original architect of everything is nature herself, and nobody knew that better than German photographer and sculptor Karl Blossfeldt.

When Blossfeldt, a sculptural iron caster in the early 1880s, switched to studying illustration in Berlin at the Kunstgewerbemuseum, he received a life-changing scholarship from Moritz Meurer, a renowned professor of ornament and design. Meurer became his new teacher, and he had an assignment for Blossfeldt: to travel around Europe and North America photographing botanical specimens that would serve as references for Meurer’s work. To do this, Blossfeldt created a first-of-its-kind camera he'd augmented with specialty magnification lenses.

The nineteenth century was a fertile time in the field of photography, and Blossfeldt was perfectly poised to learn the craft while obsessively cataloging what would ultimately turn out to be a collection of over 6,000 photographs of plants. Both Cirsium Canum (Queen Anne Thistle) and Silphium Laciniatum (Compass Plant) are particularly architectural-looking specimens–it is extremely easy to imagine how either subject would work beautifully as a sculpture.