The rooms of the Natural History Museum in Vienna, Austria are astonishingly beautiful, with carved ceilings and creaking wood floors. Each room, painted a different color, is lined with dark wood cases, which are filled with row after row of lovingly cared-for taxidermy.

There was one feature that particularly caught my eye. There were a number of beautiful glass models in the section of ocean-life.

Delicate and lifelike, the models were of jellyfish and sea anemones; creatures that tend to lose their beauty in the wet specimen’s jar of formaldehyde.

It is truly amazing that the meticulous work of a father/son team, more than 150 years ago, can still appear to be contemporary.

Someone who has never heard of these perfect 19th century models of glass could easily be fooled into thinking that they are modern solutions for the sea-life displays of museums.