St. Louis Sulphide Paperweight
date: label: date made
content: 1847
name: label: maker
content: St. Louis
notes: label: Description (Brief)
content: In the 1700s, paperweights made from textured stone or bronze were part of the writer’s tool kit, which also included a quill pen and stand, inkpot, and blotter. By the mid-1800s, decorative paperweights produced by glassmakers in Europe and the United States became highly desired collectibles.
label: Description (Brief)
content: Decorative glass paperweights reflected the 19th-century taste for intricate, over-the-top designs. Until the spread of textiles colorized with synthetic dyes, ceramics and glass were among the few objects that added brilliant color to a 19th-century Victorian interior. The popularity of these paperweights in the 1800s testifies to the sustained cultural interest in hand craftsmanship during an age of rapid industrialization.
label: Description (Brief)
content: Glass production at Saint Louis was authorized by Louis XV in 1767. By 1782 the firm was creating high quality glass crystal, progressing into pressed glass in the 1800s. St. Louis produced paperweights from 1845 to about 1867.
label: Description (Brief)
content: This St. Louis paperweight is known as a “sulphide,” meaning it contains a porcelain cameo—in this case an American eagle. The eagle is surrounded by concentric millefiori, in which colored glass canes are placed in rings around a center cane, including one date cane marked “1847.” Millefiore paperweights, first manufactured in Venice, consist of sections from rods of colored glass encased in a clear, colorless sphere. By the mid-nineteenth century, glass factories elsewhere in Europe were emulating the millefiore style.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: France: Lorraine
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Ceramics and Glass
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content: Paperweights
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content: Art
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content: Domestic Furnishings
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Mrs. Florence E. Bushee
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: CE.65.480
label: catalog number
content: 65.480
label: accession number
content: 264964
label: collector/donor number
content: 32
objectType: label: Object Name
content: paperweight
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: glass (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 2 3/8 in x 3 1/4 in; 6.0325 cm x 8.255 cm