Customer Reviews

All About Paperweights

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The book is not as comprehensive as the title suggests, virtually leaving out the Scottish factories apart from one or two cursory comments. This may seem remiss of the author, especially for those of us who cannot afford the early French weights of Baccarat, Clichy and St. Louis, most of which are snapped up by the American market, where the hobby is thriving. Many of the workers from these French factories migrated to America

Whether the author has missed the Scottish factories intentionally or by error is hard to say, but we should remember that Strathearn, Perthshire and Caithness are relatively new kids on the block and two of those, Strathearn and Perthshire existed for a relatively short space of time. They have been superseded by ex-craftsmen from those factories, i.e. John Deacons and Peter McDougall, to name but two, who are making excellent weights at for the moment, reasonable prices and will have their place in paperweight history, perhaps with their weights commanding the same high prices that the French factories do now, but by and large the Scottish factories play a small part in paperweight history.

Returning to the book itself, what is between the covers, particularly the photographs is nothing short of superb. Photographs of weights from the mid-eighteen hundreds, from the French factories, which coincidentally only made paperweights for a relatively short space of time. These weights are a joy to behold and particularly with the millefiore (thousand flowers) something different can be seen each time you look at the weight.

If you cannot afford the many hundreds, sometimes thousands of pounds that these paperweights now command, a good colour photograph is surely the next best thing.

The many differing forms of paperweight are shown in the book; Millefiore as mentioned. Lampwork and to a lesser degree Sulphides, a type of weight that showed enclosed within the weight, the portrait of a famous person of the day, comprised of a white material, looking a little like china clay. These weights are not usually as popular with the collector as the other types.

If you are a collector or have an interest in paperweights, you will want to own this book.

This is a great reference book with plenty of color and giving a full explanation of how the paperweights are built, going so far and covering so many makers it doesnt offer the full indepth of each maker but as a quick reference and teaser its very good value for money, mine was a second hand copy but very good condition considering it was ex library and had no marks of any distinction, it has given me along with other books the fullest information to profile, history and most importantly confidence in spending hundreds or thousands on those antique or modern collectable paperweights, anything that saves you wasting that much money is worth its weight in...well...paperweights