The catalog for a 1978 exhibition of paperweights at The Corning Museum of Glass praised this 19th-century French weight decorated with a pear as “perhaps the most exciting of all fruit weights.” The authors also noted that “fruits in paperweights . . . are by process three-dimensional, which may account for the appeal they have for some over flat flower weights.” The fine execution and unusually convincing leaves of the pear weight make it an outstanding example of the glassmaker’s art. The high dome and the treatment of the ground color are typical of weights made at the Pantin factory near Paris. However, the modeling of the leaves and the pear is similar to that found in weights produced at Saint Louis. Therefore, the pear weight cannot be attributed with certainty to either of these factories.