Why Buy A Paperweight?

A secret tradition of beauty and design

There once was a time when paperweights were the height of fashion. In mid-19th century France, there was even a 15-to-20-year span known as the Classic Period of paperweight production, during which an estimated 100,000 paperweights were produced by the glass manufacturers Baccarat, Clichy, Pantin, and St. Louis. The popularity of paperweights faded as letter writing gave way to other forms of communication, but paperweights continue to represent elegance and quality wherever they appear. Why buy a paperweight? We list some reasons.

Historical exhibits

European interest in the earliest glass paperweights was sparked by two exhibits: the Industrial Exhibition in Vienna in 1845, and the Great Exhibition in London in 1851.

It was Venetian glassmakers who put their wares on display in 1845. The technique they used was known as millefiori, which is Italian for 1,000 flowers. Millefiori paperweights featured numerous pieces of colored glass cut from long glass rods or canes.

The canes could then be combined to create scrambled, concentric, or pattern millefiori, or a single cane used to create a uniform, textured glass paperweight. As the name suggests, millefiori glass paperweights resemble thousands of strangely beautiful flowers trapped within a transparent ball.

The French genius for glass paperweights was revealed at the London show in 1851. The directors of the Baccarat and St. Louis factories had seen the Venetian exhibit in 1845, and the French went on to put the millefiori technique to astonishingly beautiful use.

American paperweights

American-made paperweights began to appear in 1853 after the French Clichy factory displayed their glass paperweights at that year's Crystal Palace Exhibition in New York.

The popularity of glass paperweights faded in Europe during the Industrial Revolution, as factories turned their attentions to crystal and chandeliers. However, glass paperweights continued to thrive in America over the next generation as skilled glassmakers immigrated to there from Europe.

The American glass paperweights during the years from 1860 to 1900 are thus European in derivation, but feature simpler and almost familial designs in comparison to their ornate progenitors.

Paperweights as art

The first major auction of paperweights was conducted by Sotheby's in 1925, and as French factories returned to paperweight production following World War II, collecting glass paperweights as a hobby became enormously popular. The finest examples of glass paperweights from the Classic Period and beyond can now be found in museums and private collections all over the world.

As for the glass paperweight as a functional tool, it has generally been made obsolescent by the advent of the personal computer. Yet paperweights of all kinds remain popular thanks to their beauty and intriguing links with the past.

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