Paperweight c. 19th century

This paperweight was produced by the Baccarat Glass Works. It encapsulates a delicate glass rose within a clear, weighty dome. To create this object, a skilled glassblower likely layered molten glass, manipulating its form while hot to shape the petals, stem and leaves. The colors were achieved by adding metallic oxides to the glass batch. The entire design was carefully constructed, and then encased in a gather of clear crystal. The weight and clarity of the glass are not accidental; they speak to Baccarat's mastery of glassmaking and its status as a luxury manufacturer. The paperweight is a quintessentially bourgeois object, a small token of beauty for the desk, but it's also a showcase for remarkable skill. It occupies an interesting position between the industrial and the handmade; while designs may have been standardized, each paperweight would have demanded the touch of a highly trained artisan. Appreciating this demands that we think about glass not just as a transparent material, but as a substance transformed by human labor.