Encasing glass decorations and small-scale sculpture within a mass of molten colorless glass to make paperweights began in the 1840s. It continues to be practiced by a limited number of specialized glass artists.
A small, heavy object designed to hold down loose papers. The first glass paperweights were made in the early 1840s in Venice and France, and their manufacture spread rapidly to other parts of Europe and the United States. Glass paperweights ceased to be fashionable in the early 20th century, but the craft of making them revived in the 1950s.