Good Or Great Paperweight

A rough pontil mark is the sign of a poor paperweight. A frosted or ground base is the sign of the new paperweight. An antique paperweight will have a slightly concave area where the pontil mark was ground down. Some of the finest French weights have strawberry-diamond-cut bases shaped like stars.

Old Or New Paperweight

Irregular bubbles in nineteenth-century paperweights are flaws, not signs of excellence. Areas evenly patterned with controlled bubbles are an indication of a twentieth-century paperweight.

French Paperweights

French paperweight makers are known by the location of the factories. The three most important are: Baccarat (Compagnie des Cristalleries de Baccarat, 1765-present), Clichy (L.J. Maës, Clichy-la-Garenne, 1837-present, merged with Cristallerie de Sèvres in 1885), and Saint-Louis (Compagnie des Cristalleries de Saint-Louis, 1767-present). (Photo: L. H. Selman) Baccarat, a French company, made this footed paperweight […]

Other Paperweights

Inexpensive advertising paperweights were made after the 1860s. The weights often had photographs or printed messages encased between layers of glass. Some included millefiori canes with logos or commemorative dates. Many were domed, like classic paperweights, and others were rectangular, oval, or diamond-shaped. They are of historic interest, but most do not have the artistic […]

Millefiori

The earliest paperweights were created using the Italian millefiori and lampwork techniques. The term millefiori, which literally means “thousand flowers,” is used to describe the process that combines segments of glass for a mosaic, flowerlike effect. The glassmaker first creates canes by fusing colored glass rods together. The cane is then sliced into thin discs, […]

American Paperweights

The Boston & Sandwich Glass Company, Sandwich, Massachusetts, produced the first American millefiori paperweights in 1852. New England Glass Company and Mt. Washington Glass Company, both of New Bedford, Massachusetts, were the other two major producers. American glassmakers used the same basic techniques as the French, so the paperweights are very similar. Around 1900, Millville, […]