Cecilia Glaisher (20 April 1828 – 28 December 1892) was an English amateur photographer, artist, illustrator and print-maker, working in the 1850s world of Victorian science and natural history.
[1] Her father, John Henry Belville (1795–1856), was an assistant astronomical observer at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, and author of A Manual of the Barometer (London: R. & J.E.
[2] It is not known whether Cecilia Belville received any formal or scientific education, although an upbringing where the recording of astronomical and meteorological phenomena was part of daily life suggests an awareness of a wider world view than that given to many nineteenth-century British females.
However, perhaps due to an inability to raise sufficient subscriptions, or difficulties in producing prints in consistent quantities, the project appears to have been abandoned by 1856.
[12] During the same period, Cecilia Glaisher worked in collaboration with her husband on a study intended to distinguish different types of snow crystal structure and understand how they were formed.
[16] These schematic drawings were based on original sketches made at the Glaishers' window from direct observation of snow crystals seen through magnifying lenses.
[19] Other work made by Cecilia Glaisher at this time consists of a series of leaf impressions on paper, to which colour has been added by hand, to show species of leaves at different seasons.