Blair Museum of Lithophanes

The Blair Museum is a one-room curiosity tucked inside the Toledo Botanical Garden on the west side of town. Each lithophane sits on a backlit display — without the light from behind they look like blank cream porcelain; switch the light on and an entire landscape, portrait or nativity scene appears in fine detail.

Free admission, open weekend afternoons May through October (check ahead — the hours are limited and run on volunteer time). Combine with a walk in the botanical garden, which is worth an hour in its own right. The museum is the kind of obsessive single-topic collection Toledo does well.

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A story
Lithophanes — translucent porcelain plaques carved so that an image appears only when light shines through them from behind — were a Victorian parlour craft, invented in Berlin around 1827 and largely forgotten by 1900. Toledo dentist Laurel G. Blair began collecting them in the 1950s, eventually accumulating over 2,300, the largest collection in the world. He left it to the city on the condition that the lighting be perfect.

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