Paperweight c. 1845 - 1860

Editor: This is "Paperweight," made by Baccarat Glassworks sometime between 1845 and 1860. It’s a simple glass paperweight with a lovely stylized flower inside. What strikes me is the delicate precision, the way they’ve captured a floral motif in a solid object. How should we interpret its existence and fabrication? Curator: Consider its means of production. Nineteenth-century glassblowing, even for functional objects, required specialized labor and high levels of skill. This wasn’t merely about mass-producing containers; there's an artistry involved in manipulating molten glass to achieve such detail. We should investigate the factory setting, the worker's condition. Does this blur the line between craft and industry, and how does its materiality reflect the burgeoning industrial era and changing patterns of consumption? Editor: That's fascinating. So you see its beauty not just in the final form but in the entire production process? Does knowing it was used to hold down paper seem too… mundane? Curator: Not at all. The paperweight’s function, or seeming lack of it, offers us clues. Think about the explosion of paper in the 19th century - correspondence, documents, printed ephemera. Holding it down *is* part of a wider network of communication. The question arises: who owned these? What sort of papers did they weigh down? What material realities, in factories and beyond, underpin the artwork? Editor: It makes you realize this object has unseen layers of historical information inside it. Thank you for guiding me on how to dig them out! Curator: Exactly. Understanding the social and material networks embedded within something as simple as a paperweight provides insight into the very structure of that time period. We reveal its social footprint, its human roots.