About Paperweights

PAPERWEIGHTS:

Paperweights evolved from the functional to the beautiful during the early part of the industrial revolution. As the economic engines of commerce began to generate bills, letters, and other business paper something had to be provided to hold them down during the breezes that were common when offices had windows and air was allowed to waft through the workplace. Early paperweights were simple, functional items of metal or glass. By the 1840s, a whole industry emerged in France that would transform the simple paperweight into a glorious work of art for every desktop.

The French glass factories of the 1840s stood on the shoulders of the Italian glass workers of Murano (Venice) who continued the artistic traditions of ancient Rome. While the Italians utilized and retained many of the ancient processes, the French were the first to capitalize on the optical characteristics of glass. They enclosed their decorations motifs within glass spheres and made the magnification part of the total effect. Their paperweights of the late 1840s stand as the artistic pinnacle of the classic period. The Crystal Palace Exhibition in London in 1851 showcased the French and German/Bohemian paperweights and they were subsequently emulated and 'improved' by the glass houses in the United Kingdom and slightly later in the United States.

Paperweights of interest to current collectors can be divided three periods:

• The Classic Period
• The Folk Art and Advertising Period
• The Contemporary Period

The Classic period starts in the 1840s and runs through the 1880s and was centered in France (Clichy, St Louis, Baccarat, and Pantin), England (Walsh-Walsh, Bacchus, and others), and then America (Boston & Sandwich, New England Glass Company, and Pairpoint).

The Folk Art and Advertising period began in the 1880s and continued into World War II. Some of the most original American contributions to paperweights were made in Millville New Jersey, including the crimp rose and the frit weights (decoration made with powdered glass). This period saw the decline of the major glass factories (as mechanization changed how glass was made) but saw the advent of small, family-run glass factories that continued paperweight making.

The Contemporary period started after World War II when Charles Kaziun almost single-handedly reinvented the processes and mechanisms used to create the classic paperweights and introduced the "studio glass" artist - an artist effectively works alone in a studio to create glass paperweights and other glass objects using the techniques first popularized by the classic period.