Paperweight with Flowers

Paperweight with Flowers

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Object Name: 
Paperweight with Flowers
Department
European
Category
Paperweights
Place Made: 
France, Saint-Louis
Date: 
about 1845-1855
Color
AAT
yellow
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colorless
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white
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green
Technique
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cased glass
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paperweights
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lampworking
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cutting
Material
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lead glass
Dimensions: 
Overall H: 5.9 cm, Diam (max): 8 cm
Accession Number: 
57.3.186
Credit Line: 
Gift of the Honorable and Mrs. Amory Houghton
Location: 
On Display
Description
Colorless, yellow-green, white, and polychrome lead glasses; encased double overlay, lampwork, cut. Domed, circular form, encasing a large circular window on top, with six smaller circular windows around it; encasing a large upright bouquet with red, white, blue, and amber lampworked flowers, and white, blue and amber flowers amid green foliage; polished concave base with cut star.
Label Text
Encasing a flat bouquet in molten glass is technically challenging, but the difficulty is greatly increased when an upright bouquet is involved. To produce the famous “Yellow Encased Overlay,” the glassmaker enclosed a bouquet of large, colorful flowers and leaves in a gather of colorless molten glass and thin white and yellow-green overlays. The weight was annealed, and circular “windows” were cut through the overlays. It was then reheated so that an outer covering of colorless glass could be applied. If the weight was overheated, the double overlay could collapse under the hot glass covering and lose its carefully carved shape. There must have been many such failures in making these complicated weights, for examples are very rare today.
Provenance
Lindon, Maurice, Former Collection
Houghton, The Honorable Amory, Former Collection
1957
Houghton, Laura (Mrs. Amory), Source
1957
Flowers Which Clothe the Meadows
Venue(s)
Corning Museum of Glass 1978-04-26 through 1978-10-21
Paperweights from The Corning Museum of Glass (1987) illustrated, #13; BIB# 34353
A Pride of Paperweights (1978-08) pp. 134-135, ill.;
Paperweights: Flowers Which Clothe the Meadows (1978) pp. 90, 152, #219; BIB# 20097
The Paperweight Collection of the Honorable Amory Houghton (1978) cover;

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