By José Pardo-Tomás
The Museo Pedagógico in Montevideo [fig. 1], named after José Pedro Varela (1845-1879), considered the founder of republican, public, compulsory, secular and free education in Uruguay, is located in the heart of the city. Since its foundation in 1889, it has occupied a neoclassical palace whose upper floor also housed, for a time, the Internado Normal de Señoritas [Normal Boarding School for Young Ladies], for the female teachers who were trained there. Wandering through the current dense and extensive permanent exhibition, with the kind guidance of William Tedesco, one of its teaching staff, it is impossible not to be fascinated by the abundance and variety of the materials on display.

fig. 1 Museo Pedagógico de Montevideo façade
In spite of this, we cannot deviate much from the purpose that has led us here; we are looking for the possible existence in the museum of “pomonas”, that is, one of those collections of models that reproduce the species and varieties of fruits that are produced in a certain territory. These are figures moulded in wax, plaster, papier-mâché or other materials, with the purpose of faithfully reproducing the fruits in their natural size, colour and appearance. From the middle of the eighteenth century onwards, this type of collection aroused the interest of private collectors and then expanded its uses and, therefore, its audiences. As is well known, the context in which most of these collections were produced was due to the extraordinary demand from institutions dedicated to the teaching of horticulture due to la frénésie taxinomique, floristique et horticole du XIXe siècle, in the fortunate expression of Denis Diagre-Vanderpelen.
However, as we have said, there was also a certain demand for these fruit models in other areas and from a period before the appearance of these specialized educational institutions. Our aim, as we have already shown in another post on this blog, is twofold. First, to locate collections of fruit models from different historical provenances and with different uses, both historical and current, in order to reconstruct their circulation and the different exhibition regimes they have known. Second, to find material evidence of the existence of a production of these fruit models on a local scale, by local craftsmen and workshops, in order to respond to the local demand of collectors, museums or schools, before and after the irruption in the market of the large firms producing pedagogical materials dedicated to the teaching of horticulture and fruit growing.

fig. 2 Montevideo, Museo Pedagogico Botany Showcase
In the Pedagogical Museum, in the room dedicated to Clemente Estable (1894-1976), founder of the Institute of Biological Research of Montevideo, didactic materials related to science teaching are exhibited. In it, there is a little – or, depending on how you look at it, a lot – of everything: things you would expect and surprising things. Most of the materials are generally recognizable as coming from the great manufacturers of didactic models for the teaching of natural sciences; some of them (including one from this same museum) has been reported, in another post on this blog, by Susana V. García, one of the great specialists on the subject. In the room we are referring to, the plates, murals and spectacular botanical models of Vilmorin, Auzoux, Deyrolle, etc. are immediately recognizable [fig. 2]. But there does not seem to be what we are looking for; something corroborated by the museum staff consulted: there is no memory of a collection of fruit models.
However, on the second shelf to the right of the display case with the “Botany” sign and in which the spectacular Deyrolle models of enormous flowers, designed to show in detail the reproductive organs of angiosperms, attract attention, we are struck by an ‘odd couple’: two models representing apples, but of very different size and modelled with different materials [fig 3]. On the right, an apple of enormous size, an articulated model designed to open longitudinally and show the inside of the fruit, perhaps also from Deyrolle, although for the moment it has not been possible to confirm this.

fig. 3a Apples, Montevideo Museo Pedagogico

fig. 3b Apple 228, Montevideo Museo Pedagogico
But the model on the left is the one that really catches our attention: an apple of natural size and colour, which looks like it was moulded in plaster. It has a label attached to the lower left side with a number “228”; nothing else. In the old inventories of the materials that initially formed the museum, there is a brief record 228 “apple”, also another that says “tomato” and a third, “onion”. There are no further indications, neither of the material, nor of the origin, nor of the manufacturer. Currently, neither the tomato nor the onion are exhibited in the showcases of the “Clemente Estable” room, but in a photographic album dating from 1894, five years after the museum was inaugurated, there is a photograph of a showcase in which these two models are visible (but not the apple) [fig. 4]. In the collection of eighty-two Vilmorin moulages now in the Muséum d’Auxerre, there are several models of onions and tomatoes; but there are none of apples. There are several hypotheses about the provenance of these three models.

fig. 4 Album 1894 Showcase, Montevideo Museo Pedagogico
On the one hand, they could come from Deroylle, although botanical models of this type were not very frequent in his catalogue, unlike his pièces d’anatomie botanique, which can be found in almost all the didactic collections that have survived to the present day, in pedagogical museums such as the one in Montevideo, as well as in primary schools, secondary schools, colleges and universities. Without going any further, in Montevideo, collections of these pieces can be found both in the Faculty of Agronomy of the University of the Republic (I thank Victoria Valtierra, researcher at the Botany Laboratory for kindly providing me with the information and photographs of the 6 models that are preserved), and in the fascinating Museum of Natural History “Dr. Carlos A. Torres de la Llosa”, located in the IAVA building (“Alfredo Vázquez Acevedo” Institute), which I had the pleasure of visiting with two exceptional guides: Erika del Pino and Martín Batallés.
On the other hand, the three models could have come from the collection offruit and vegetable moulages that the French horticultural company Vilmorin-Andrieux et Cie. had been producing since 1850. The relationship of Vilmorin-Andrieux firm with the region of the Río de La Plata region went back at least to the years 1848-53, when Vilmorin himself had proposed to Aimé Bonpland to become the go-between the French company and the horticulturists of the vast region on both sides of the Uruguay River. In those years, Bonpland went from Corrientes to Montevideo not only to collect his annual pension sent from the Muséum de Paris, but also to collect goods that he had bought, by catalogue, from Vilmorin. These orders for his chacra (estate) in Santa Ana do not seem to have included moulages, but only fruit, vegetable seeds and ornamental flower bulbs, as can be deduced from the catalogue, the invoices and the two letters of Vilmorin found among Bonpland’s documents preserved in the Museo de Farmacobotánica “Juan A. Domínguez”, at the University of Buenos Aires. In any case, this and other episodes prove a long-standing and wide circulation of Vilmorin’s catalogues and products in the vast Cuenca del Plata region, comprised between Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil.
Finally, a third hypothesis that cannot be ruled out or confirmed for the moment: in those initial years of the Museum there may have been an artisan workshop in Montevideo dedicated to the manufacture of moulages. There is no doubt that local demand in those years was growing and not limited to fruit models, judging by what we know from other areas, such as the medical world. Specifically, I am referring to the possible existence of anatomical moulages in the collection of the old faculty of medicine, whose chair of anatomy began to operate in 1876.
We will therefore have to continue searching. Solving the mysterious case of apple 228 will bring us closer to a better understanding of the contexts of production, circulation and exhibition of fruit models: an imitation of the territory of nature which Pomona governed and which, for more than a century and a half, attracted collectors, artists, horticulturists, merchants and teachers.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Vera Lucia Gaspar da Silva & Gabriel Scagliola, “Museu e Biblioteca Pedagógicos: um grande gabinete experimental de ciência popular (Montevidéu / Uruguai, 1889)”, Cadernos De História Da Educação 21, 2022, e105.
- Susana V. García, “La industria didáctica y las colecciones escolares en perspectiva histórica”, en: Patrimonio histórico educativo. Investigaciones y experiencias en América Latina y Península Ibérica, ed. Marcela Pelada, Buenos Aires, Huellas de la Escuela, 2015, pp.119-134.
- Hans Jürgen Lechtreck, “A history of some fruit models in wax and other materials: scientific teaching aids and courtly table decoration”, Archives of Natural History 30 (2), 2003, pp. 299-316.
- Georges Trebuchet & Christian Gautier, Une famille, une maison: Vilmorin-Andrieux, Verrières, L’Historique de Verrières, 1982.
- Martine Faure, “Deyrolle de père en fils, entre science et commerce, une vitrine parisienne de l’Histoire naturelle au XIXe siècle“, Naturae, 10, 2023, pp. 171-240.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
alexiacomte (September 26, 2024). El Mysterious Case de Apple 228. SciCoMove — Scientific Collections on the Move. Retrieved April 28, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/12cyy