Wardian case
Nathaniel Ward’s sealed glass case – it made it possible to ship living plants across the oceans.
Around 1829 the London doctor Nathaniel Ward found that a fern had sprouted in a sealed glass jar in which he kept a chrysalis. The moisture stayed in the jar, and the plant survived without watering.
Wardian cases were used to ship living plants on long sea voyages, among them tea from China to India. At home they became a parlour ornament and part of the 19th-century fern craze.
Materials: Glass, wood or iron, soil
Manufacture: Panes of glass in a tight frame; cases were made in every size, from window boxes to large shipping cases.
A closed glass box, often with a pitched roof.
Ferns and mosses inside.
Decorative cast-iron frames on Victorian parlour cases.