COLLECTIBLES : Worth Their ‘Weights in Glass

Glass paperweights make up one of the rare fields in which modern and antique works are collected and displayed together--with the record price for an antique reaching $258,000 and some modern examples priced upward of $20,000.

“Nearly half of today’s collectors display antique and modern paperweights side by side,” said Lawrence H. Selman, founder of the International Paperweight Society. “In addition to being beautiful, they have both proved to be good investments.”

French glassblowers began creating miniature works of art encased in glass domes, the first glass paperweights, in 1845. Craftsmen at Baccarat, Saint Louis and Clichy developed formulas and techniques for shrinking and encasing colorful, artistic designs in clear glass. France became the world’s leading producer of glass paperweights.

Twenty years later, for reasons no one is certain of, paperweight production came to an abrupt end in France. Although craftspeople in England and the United States had begun producing fine paperweights, by the beginning of the 20th Century paperweight production had become a lost art.

A paperweight dated 1853 and signed by Martin Kayser, a Baccarat glassblower, was discovered in the corner of a parish church in Baccarat in 1951. At the urging of paperweight collector Paul Jokelson, founder of the Paperweight Collectors’ Assn., the firms of Baccarat and Saint Louis began to hunt for the lost formulas and techniques. Their discoveries have enabled several major firms and acclaimed glassblowers to create paperweights equal in artistry to those made nearly 150 years ago.

The first major French firm to introduce the artistic paperweight was the Cristalleries de Saint Louis, in 1845. A year later, Baccarat entered the field. The latest of the three great French glassworks, Clichy-la-Garenne, was the only French firm to exhibit at the New York Crystal Palace in 1853, bringing its paperweights to the attention of Americans.

The three major American manufacturers of artistic paperweights were all founded by one man, Deming Jarves. The first verifiable American paperweight was signed and dated in 1851 by the New England Glass Co., more commonly known as Cambridge Glass, founded by Jarves and his partners.

Jarves also founded the Boston and Sandwich Manufacturing Co. and the Mount Washington Glass Co., which produced artistic paperweights.

Today, some collections are assembled around a theme, such as flowers or fish, while others focus on the works of a particular firm or well-known craftsman.

The finest examples are distinguished by their rarity, beauty, craftsmanship and condition. Because most of the finest French paperweights were produced between 1845 and 1865, those that have survived are apt to bear chips and scratches. Advanced collectors accept minor wear on rare and important paperweights but will downgrade a more common paperweight exhibiting the same wear.

Among the flaws that can be spotted on an inferior paperweight are bubbles in the glass, a design too close to the top of the dome, a design placed off-center; breaks in the stems or petals of flowers, unevenly spaced elements and distortion of the design through the glass dome.

An authentic antique Baccarat or Saint Louis paperweight, even without a signature, will often be worth $1,000 to $3,000. Some of the finest and rarest have sold for more than $150,000. The record is held by a Clichy paperweight that fetched $258,000.

Even antique weights with relatively simple designs and those in poor condition or with flaws in craftsmanship are apt to cost $500 to $1,000.