02 December 2010

Treehopper sculpture

This summer I posted a photo of a treehopper with an immense pronotum, but that one is ordinary compared to the one in the image above.  It's a sculpture by Alfred Keller:
Keller was trained as a kunstschmied, an ‘art blacksmith’. From 1930 until his early death he was employed by the Berlin Museum für Naturkunde (Museum of Natural History), painstakingly labouring over his recreations of insects and their larvae. Each took a year to complete. Keller worked first in plasticine, from which he cast a model in plaster. This plaster reference model he then recast in papier maché. Some details he added, cast in wax, with wings and bristles in celluloid and galalith (an early plastic material used in jewellery). Finally he coloured the surfaces, sometimes with additional gilding. The levels of patience and manual control Keller exercised were incredible. His fly, for example, boasts 2,653 bristles.
For a discussion of the excrescences on the critter's head, see the discussion at Why Evolution is True, via BoingBoing.

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