“Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was gone, without leaving any record behind.”
Wilson “Snowflake” Bentley, a Vermont farmer, achieved world wide fame with his pioneering work in photomicrography. Adapting a microscope to a bellows camera, in 1885 he became the first person to photograph a single snow crystal. He went on to record some 5,000 snow crystals, discovering each was unique; Bentley is the source of our childhood knowledge that no two snowflakes are alike.
Bentley’s work was featured in House & Garden’s December 2004 issue. He was the subject of a Caldecott Medal-winning book, Snowflake Bentley, by Jacqueline Briggs Martin (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998), and a biography by Duncan C. Blanchard, The Snowflake Man: A Biography of Wilson A. Bentley (McDonald & Woodward Publishing Company, 1998). Bentley himself published numerous articles about his work in magazines such as National Geographic, Harper’s Monthly, Popular Science, Popular Mechanics, and The New York Times Magazine, as well as a book, Snow Crystals, later republished as Snowflakes in Photographs (Dover Publications, 2000).
Snowflake
Vintage photomicrograph on printing out paper with gold
chloride toning from glass plate negative
3 9/16 x 2 15/16 inches
Executed between 1885 and 1931
Snowflake
Vintage photomicrograph on printing out paper with gold
chloride toning from glass plate negative
3 9/16 x 3 inches
Executed between 1885 and 1931
WILSON A. BENTLEY (1865-1931)
DAVIS & LANGDALE COMPANY, INC.
231 EAST 60 STREET
NEW YORK, NY 10022
Tel: 212-838-0333
Fax: 212-752-7764
Cup Form Frost
Vintage photomicrograph on printing out paper with gold
chloride toning from glass plate negative
4 x 3 1/16 inches
Executed between 1885 and 1931
Dandelion
Vintage photograph on printing out paper with gold
chloride toning from glass plate negative
3 x 3 15/16 inches
Executed between 1885 and 1931
Dew on Grasshopper
Vintage photograph on printing out paper with gold
chloride toning from glass plate negative
4 15/16 x 3 inches
Executed between 1885 and 1931
Windowpane Frost
Vintage photomicrograph on printing out paper with gold
chloride toning from glass plate negative
2 15/16 x 3 15/16 inches
Executed between 1885 and 1931
Clouds
Vintage photograph on printing out paper with gold
chloride toning from glass plate negative
2 15/16 x 4 inches
Executed between 1885 and 1931
