English. Early 20C. The case framed in leaded lights and glazed with green glass at the lower (subsoil) level. 1 lateral light slides up in its lead channel for access. There are 4 brass bun feet and 2 brass finials. The case came with contemporary instruction and explanation sheets in the type face of the era. The case contains a succulent bearing a plastic label inscribed ‘Hanworthia Attenuata Striata’. The plant is of maximum size and appears contempory with the period of the case. L 17 inches (43.2cms) x H 17 inches (43.2cms) x W 8.25inches (21cms).
The Wardian Case was invented following a scientific experiment with philanthropic aims. It was soon used commercially as a means of transporting living plants from the far corners of the globe to satisfy the demands of wealthy landowners and enhance the collections of Botanical societies.
In 1829 Dr Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward’s medical practice was near St Katherine’s dock. A keen naturalist, he grew plants in his back yard but the air was heavily polluted by emissions from factory chimneys and the sulphuric gases and acid rain made it hard for many plants to establish. Finding a fern and a grass seedling growing in an ait tight jar influenced Dr Ward to have a glass case made to grow ferns in.
The Wardian Case carried medicinal, economic and ornamental plants all over the world. One of Dr Ward’s correspondents was William Jackson Hooker, later director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Hooker’s son Joseph Dalton Hooker was one of the first plant explorers to use the new Wardian cases, when he shipped live plants back to England from New Zealand in 1841, during the pioneering voyage of HMS Erebus that circumnavigated Antarctica.
Wardian cases soon became features of stylish drawing rooms in Western Europe and the United States. In the polluted air of Victorian cities, the fern craze and the craze for growing orchids that followed, owed much of their impetus to the new Wardian cases.
More importantly, the Wardian case unleashed a revolution in the mobility of commercially important plants. Robert Fortune shipped to British India 20,000 tea plants smuggled out of Shanghai, China, to begin the tea plantations of Assam. After germination of imported seeds in the heated glasshouses of Kew, seedlings of the rubber tree of Brazil were shipped successfully in Wardian cases to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and the new British territories in Malaya to start the rubber plantations. Wardian cases have thus been credited for helping break geographic monopolies in the production of important agricultural goods.
Dr. Ward was always active in the Society of Apothecaries of London, of which he became Master in 1854. Until very recently, the Society managed the Chelsea Physic Garden, London, the oldest botanical garden in the UK. Ward was a founding member of both the Botanical Society of Edinburgh and the Royal Microscopical Society, a Fellow of the Linnean Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society. L 17 inches (43.2cms) x H 16 inches (40.6cms) x W 8 inches (20cms).
