Val St. Lambert Paperweight
date: label: date made
content: mid 1800s
name: label: maker
content: Val St. Lambert
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: The Val St. Lambert glassworks was founded by a chemist and an engineer in 1826 at a Cistercian monastery in Seraing, near Liege, Belgium. The firm was the first and only crystal glass maker in Belgium.
label: Description (Brief)
content: This Val St. Lambert paperweight features a four-loop millefiori pattern on an opaque deep pink ground with yellow and white torsade (twisted ribbon). 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
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.67.246
label: catalog number
content: 67.246
label: accession number
content: 213138
objectType: label: Object Name
content: paperweight
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: glass, transparent (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: opaque twist (joint piece production method/technique)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 2 3/8 in x 3 11/16 in; 6.0325 cm x 9.398 cm