Bird's Nest Coral Specimen with Cut Glass Plate. The plate has a palm tree design on it, and serves as a display base for the coral to rest on. 

Size: 9 x 7 x 6 1/2 in. 

Corals are colonial marine invertebrates, living organisms that form compact reefs out of many individual polyps, with each polyp a sac-like animal typically only a few millimeters in diameter and a few centimeters in height. Corals require sunlight and grow in clear, shallow water, typically at depths less than 200 feet down, and the practice of bringing up, drying, and displaying coral dates back to antiquity, with the trade of coral for money or other economically viable items documented by Pliny the Elder in the 1st Century CE. Corals are increasingly at risk of bleaching events where polyps expel the zooxanthellae in response to stress such as high water temperature or toxins, and as of 2024 there are over 2100 identified separate coral species, nearly 800 of which are currently endangered and over 100 of which are at imminent risk of extinction, making their use as art less common in the modern era. Because coral does not replenish rapidly, and the microorganisms that live and feed on them are also dying out, the symbiotic biomes that form around them are also at significant risk, with implications all the way up the food chain to humans who rely on the bounty of the sea to survive.

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