Paperweight
A paperweight is a small solid object heavy enough, when placed on top of papers, to keep them from blowing away in a breeze or from moving under the strokes of a painting brush (as with Chinese calligraphy).
In the West, the decorative paperweights are usually in limited editions, and are collected as works of fine glass art, some of which are exhibited in museums.
The ground on which the inner parts rest may be clear or colored, made of unfused sand, or resemble lace (latticinio).
[citation needed] Paperweights are made by individual artisans or in factories where many artists and technicians collaborate; both may produce inexpensive as well as "collector" weights.
Workmanship, design, rarity, and condition determine a paperweight's value: its glass should not have a yellow or greenish cast,[citation needed] and there should be no unintentional asymmetries, or unevenly spaced or broken elements.
Western paperweights started in the "classic" years between 1845 and 1860 primarily[6] in three French factories named Baccarat, Saint-Louis and Clichy.
In the US, Charles Kaziun started in 1940 to produce buttons, paperweights, inkwells and other bottles, using lamp-work of elegant simplicity.
[8] Starting in the late 1960s and early 1970s, artists such as Francis Whittemore,[9] Paul Stankard,[10] his former assistant Jim D'Onofrio,[11] Chris Buzzini,[12] Delmo[13] and daughter Debbie Tarsitano,[14] Victor Trabucco[15] and sons, Gordon Smith,[16] Rick Ayotte[17] and his daughter Melissa, the father and son team of Bob and Ray Banford,[18] and Ken Rosenfeld[19] began breaking new ground and were able to produce fine paperweights rivaling anything produced in the classic period.
Lampwork paperweights have objects such as flowers, fruit, butterflies or animals constructed by shaping and working bits of colored glass with a gas burner or torch and assembling them into attractive compositions, which are then incorporated into the dome.
Sulphide paperweights have an encased cameo-like medallion or portrait plaque made from a special ceramic that is able to reproduce very fine detail.
A fourth technique, a crimp flower, usually a rose, originated in the Millville, New Jersey area in the first decade of the twentieth century.
A similar style, the marbrie, is a paperweight that has several bands of color close to the surface that descend from the apex in a looping pattern to the bottom of the weight.
Crown paperweights have twisted ribbons, alternately colored and white filigree which radiate from a central millefiori floret at the top, down to converge again at the base.
California-style paperweights are made by "painting" the surface of the dome with colored molten glass (torchwork), and manipulated with picks or other tools.
Many collectors consider the finest of these to be the Arthur Rubloff collection at the Art Institute of Chicago,[citation needed] which expanded its exhibition in 2012.
In 1998, Henry Melville Fuller donated 330 twentieth-century paperweights to the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire.
It contains indispensable, up-to-date research on the great paperweight makers of the 19th century and the masters of the art today.
The PCA holds a convention biennially, where collectors, artists, dealers and scholars from around the world meet to share their passion for the art of the paperweight.
