Beautiful Paperweight

[gtsatohms]

My son has quite an eye for treasures and found this paperweight at the flea market the other day.

I can?t figure out the signature or anything on age. Any ideas?

I don?t think it?s a cheap imitation by the way the bottom is beautifully polished. The signature is in some kind of gold writing.

Thanks!

 

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[Fat]

... paper weight? What do you hold down, the score card at the bowling alley? Joke... How big is it? I would like to have a bowling ball that looks like that.. The flowers being pulled into some kind of black hole is neat..

 

[Tpmetal]

My son has quite an eye for treasures and found this paperweight at the flea market the other day.

I can?t figure out the signature or anything on age. Any ideas?

I don?t think it?s a cheap imitation by the way the bottom is beautifully polished. The signature is in some kind of gold writing.

Thanks!View attachment 1948338
View attachment 1948339

So they have been making these the same way for a very long time and have been very popular since the 1800's. This one i imagine is a more modern one and i judge this mostly off the signature. See the signature was done with a titanium pen(or some other metal) which uses friction to leave traces of metal behind on the glass surface. This is a relatively modern way of signing glass, as before this it was done by scribing with a tool harder than glass to actually scratch the surface. So Assuming that it is a signature and not just a modern label associated with a collection, it would place it into pretty recent history. I do not know the exact dates these types of pens were used to sign glass but I do know it is probably with in the last 40 or so years.

... paper weight? What do you hold down, the score card at the bowling alley? Joke... How big is it? I would like to have a bowling ball that looks like that.. The flowers being pulled into some kind of black hole is neat..

Yes the result of the murrini being stretched in the hot process and then partly because of the grinding in the cold process. Unintentional (at least for this piece), as they usually wished to keep the murrini images undistorted in the final piece, but rather unavoidable in the bottom the the paper weight.

 

[gtsatohms]

Thanks! Any way to know who might have made this?

Are the murini the flowers? It looks almost like lily pads and blossoms on a sparkling black / dark green pond.

 

[gtsatohms]

I guess it?s not fake or an imitation then?

 

[Tpmetal]

Thanks! Any way to know who might have made this?

Are the murini the flowers? It looks almost like lily pads and blossoms on a sparkling black / dark green pond.

yes the flowers are made from murrini, which are rods of glass patterns cut up to little disks to be applied to glass and melted in. Not sure what you mean by a fake? It is a real glass murrini paperweight, this style has been made by many many artists for many many years. I can not read the signature well enough to figure out who made it and where. Could be from Murano, could be from USA, could be from China for all I know. sorry I can't be of more help. If you are interesting in seeing and learning about a very large collection of these types of paper weights, check out the corning museum of glass if you are ever in western NY, they have hundreds of them and it is an amazing museum

 

[Mackaydon]

I inherited two from my grandmother; brings back good memories. Thanks.
Don.....

 

[Digger RJ]

Nice!!! Congrats!!!

 

[Tpmetal]

I inherited two from my grandmother; brings back good memories. Thanks.
Don.....

can we see some pics?

 

[Mackaydon]

Tpmetal,
If I knew where in my (hoarder's) garage they were, I'd post a pic.
Don....

 

[gtsatohms]

Thanks for the neat insights. I read somewhere that Chinese reproductions can be identified by having a ?sawn? bottom. Something called a polished pontil is on this one.

I will take some more pictures of it and post tomorrow. It is beautiful in the sunlight.

 

[Tpmetal]

Thanks for the neat insights. I read somewhere that Chinese reproductions can be identified by having a ?sawn? bottom. Something called a polished pontil is on this one.

I will take some more pictures of it and post tomorrow. It is beautiful in the sunlight.

So the mass produced ones from the chinese sound like they just didn't finish the bottoms. A paper weight is not put on a pontil like say a vase or cup usually is (just me nit picking on calling it a pontil mark). It is formed directly on a rod and necked down and broken off leaving part of the neck behind. This is usually cut off and a flat surface ground and polished, or a concave bottom was ground and polished in on a glass lathe(used very differently than other lathes) . Also from what you describe with the sparkle, it sounds like it has green aventurine glass in it. Which is not a easily made cheap glass, rather it can be one of the more expensive colors to buy to work with.

 

[jewelerguy]

my brother collected those kind of paperweights. They are really cool. Some can be worth a bunch

 

[crashbandicoot]

Thanks! Any way to know who might have made this?

Are the murini the flowers? It looks almost like lily pads and blossoms on a sparkling black / dark green pond.

That,s a nice,almost poetic description!