The Shy Museum Goer dropped a lovely blog post about snow over the weekend. https://theshymuseumgoer.com/2025/01/05/the-fine-art-of-depicting-snow/ She says that snow was first found in Western European art in the 1500’s. Go check out Pieter Bruegel’s painting of the Epiphany in the snow. Diane Tucker is always fun.
The Jericho Society has images from the Vermont enthusiast, Wilson Bentley’s collection of photomicrographs of snowflakes. https://snowflakebentley.com/images There is also a lovely children’s book called Snowflake Bentley by Jacqueline Briggs Martin about Wilson’s efforts to catch snowflakes and take pictures.
Picture taken by Bentley from the website of the Jericho Historical Society about Bentley. Bentley’s pictures are more or less in the public domain (meaning I have no right to make money on this image).
Here’s a page from a paper that Bentley co-wrote and sent to the Smithsonian for publication. One of my favorite takeaways, beyond the beauty of the flakes is that Bentley studied lots more than just the most beautiful and perfect shapes. He described how the shapes are different at different temperatures. Around 22ºF the ice crystals are like sharp needles. I have walked in snow that blew in my face and felt like needles. It’s nice to find out that’s just the truth.
I stole the header image from my daughter.
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