Paperweight Collectors Association of Texas

Recent Activities of Interest

History of Paperweight Collectors Association of Texas, Inc.

The Paperweight Collectors Association of Texas was formally founded June 28, 1986 as a relationship of collectors and dealers of antique and contemporary glass paperweights. The purpose of the association was and is to further interest in the art of paperweights and to share group knowledge. Development of PCA/TX was the inspiration of Carl Carter, George Grupe, Harvey Jones and Robert White. From the very beginning of this organization the drive of their actions was to educate and inform as many people as possible about, the art, science, craft, structure and the history of art-glass paperweights. These aims, with structure and bylaws, were approached from many angles through the subsequent years and growing membership.

The organization began by meeting in restaurants, motels and each other's homes. But, as our numbers grew we had to move to larger quarters. By the 2nd year we went from 11 members to 65. Paul and Margaret Jokelson honored us by attending and speaking at our 1st. Anniversary meeting. Early meeting topics or themes were: my latest, first, holiday, flora & fauna paperweight; millefiori, lampwork, torch work, overlays, sulphides, and cut weights, etc. The theme was a great way to break the ice and start conversations among the participants.

As part of our fundamental outreach to our members and potential new members, newsletters were important. We only had 2 newsletters the first year and now have 4 or 5 a year. The newsletter’s focus was to provide information to collectors about new and antique weights, publications, artists, auction dates and dealer schedules. As our newsletter grew we published interviews with such notables as Paul Jokelson, Charles Kazuin, Gerrie Casper, Debbie and Delmo Tarsitano. We also inserted color photographs in our newsletter. We added advertisers to help offset expenses. To expand our membership and educational goals we began to have meetings in several major Texas cities. In 1988 we added field trips to our meetings and started to visit private collections in members’ and other’s homes and artists’ studios. Our first major fundraising project was a raffle of a Chapter weight, of lamp work Texas bluebonnets, by Ken Rosenfeld. This was followed by raffles of other artists’ donated weights, silent auctions and Association “T” shirts.

In 1989, through gratis work and expertise by a couple of members, PCA/TX applied for and received exemption from Federal Income Tax under section 501 (A) as an educational organization described in section 501(c)(3). We became the 3rd largest PCA out of 15 in the world, with 105 members. To enhance our educational objectives, members developed a traveling display of paperweights, books and related objects, which were displayed in Texas libraries. We developed a speaker’s bureau so that members could present informative talks about paperweights to other social and service clubs and organizations. Members’ articles about their collections and PCA/TX were published in Texas newspapers.

As we grew we started attracting important local and distant paperweight dealers and glass artists. Some local galleries hosted meetings at their shops and sponsored speakers. In 1991 Larry Selman came to our Dallas meeting bringing Randy Grubb as guest artist, which attracted our largest attendance. This marked our first 5 years. Membership decided to hold a contest to find an Association logo. A swirl-weight design with a central Texas five pointed star cane and repeated state silhouettes canes was adopted. As a result of numerous loyal dealer visits and annual 3-day gallery extravaganzas we were able to meet many U.S. and overseas artists and learn about them, their craft and artistry on a first-name basis. These attractions helped recruit new members. Over the years we benefited from 34 different guest speakers and 16 different paperweight sellers/dealers.

In 1993 PCA/TX learned of the Bill and Irma Runyon Art Collection at Texas A&M University. We had no idea how important this collection and the Forsyth Center Galleries would become to PCA/TX. Timothy Novak, Director/Curator, invited the association to consider holding meetings at the Forsyth Center Galleries where we would be exposed to the rare glass and art collection and fine facilities. In 1994 the first significant exhibition of paperweights to be shown in Texas was organized by the Art Museum of Santa Cruz County, California, sponsored in part by L. H. Selman, Ltd and the International Paperweight Society. “The Art of the Paperweight - Challenging Traditions”. With the cooperation of Texas A&M and Mr. Novak, the exhibit was beautifully displayed in the Forsyth Center Galleries. We felt so fortunate to have attracted such an important exhibit to Texas whose focus was strictly on fine art-glass paperweights.

To enhance our recruitment, one member developed a membership brochure to be distributed in area museums and glass/gift galleries. In 1995 a member organized and still is custodian of the circulating PCA/TX Library. The club has a considerable assortment of books, journals, auction catalogs and bulletins, videotapes and related literature all centered on paperweights. These materials are for the use of our members to help educate and further their knowledge about paperweights and the makers.

1996 was a big year for PCA/TX. We celebrated our 10th Anniversary. The MSC (Memorial Student Center) Forsyth Center Galleries at Texas A&M University hosted our event with a large, special, member’s paperweight exhibit and commemorative picture catalog “A Texas Paperweight Celebration” published by The Forsyth Center Galleries. Through the exhibit and beautiful catalog we reached 8618 people who viewed the exhibit and visited with the PCA/TX member docents. PCA/TX started its own home page this year on the World Wide Web as another way to extend our reach. Our web address has recently changed to www.pcatx.org.

The following year our membership grew to 135. As the years went by our association with this university service has endured and grown. The Galleries have hosted a number of our meetings and they have arranged numerous special events for our organization including meetings, paperweight exhibits and foreign travel tours. We owe a great deal of thanks to them for helping further the art of the paperweight. Without their support, both educationally and financially, we could not have come so far so fast. Their organization, Friends of the Forsyth (FOF), is a big part of the reason for the catalog and exhibit “The Stars of Texas”. The membership of the Paperweight Collectors Association of Texas, Inc., gives them our gratitude.

We have come a long way in 17 years. One of our member couples, Don & Ruth Smith, upon his death, donated part of their collection to FOF. We received financial donations from ExxonMobil Cultural Matching Gift Program, thanks to our Federal educational status and thanks to their retired employee, Arthur R. Elder, our current President. PCA/TX has donated many paperweight-related books to libraries across the state. It made numerous financial donations including the scholarship fund honoring Paul Stankard at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York, and the Speakers Bureau of the American Museum of Glass in Wheaton Village at Millville, New Jersey. The Paperweight Collectors Association of Texas, Inc. is now fully incorporated giving us strength to reach more people and further education about paperweights. There are many people to thank who have helped make PCA/TX, Inc. the outstanding organization it is today. The list is endless. Please consider joining us as we reach for the Stars of Texas.

The PCA TX Mission Statement “Our purpose is to foster the public awareness of paperweights and related glass art works, and promote education about the history and artistic merits of the glass paperweight art form. To accomplish this, we provide a forum for education and fellowship with other paperweight collectors, and promote sharing knowledge with other interested people. Our goal is to provide an atmosphere that is both entertaining and educational so that interested individuals may learn more fully about the fascination of glass paperweights and better appreciate their history and beauty.”

In looking for information and instruction these artists are overlooking something valuable. Their growing interest lacks an understanding of where encased flamework art came from, and even more importantly, where it is going within the art glass field. Once you learn to encase your designs, your challenge is to find acceptance by the art glass world and sales outlets for your work.

In the last 60 years of resurrecting the encased flamework art form, there have been steps forward, but these steps have been small, and slow. There are critics who properly observe that paperweight artists have excellent technical skills yet lack really innovative designs. To overcome these criticisms, which are sincere, new artists need to explore bold new approaches to encased flamework design. New visions will create new challenges and new challenges will lead to a fresh re-birth of the field. The idea that “it all has been done before” is limiting and untrue as you can see from the history of the art form.

Paperweights made in the 19th century captured floral designs, reptiles and millifiori canes in very traditional Victorian styles and primarily encased them in a globe of clear crystal. The artists of the 19th century generally produced their work in a factory setting as an aside to producing other useful glassware. Paperweights were production items, unsigned by individual artists. Compared to artists today, little or nothing is known about who specifically created the designs and what motivated their artistry. Even the factory often did not sign the work and collectors have come to identify work by the motifs and glass types used.

In a nineteenth century society with fancy desks and paper, paperweights were functional; a standard part of a desk set as well as decorative tokens given as objects of esteem. There were a few exceptions; factories would occasionally produce a commemorative or special work to demonstrate their best capabilities and secret techniques. Today such special works are the rarest of the rare and all antique works are in museums, dealers’ hands, or private collections.

Traditional antique paperweight designs primarily included flowers, reptiles and fruit, along with arrangements of millefiore canes. Except for a few antique examples of square plaques, paperweights were round. Centering the design was very important, and almost all designs were prisoners of this idea. This concentricity rule - that designs had to be centered - restricted variety in design motifs as artists struggled for tightly balanced, harmonious designs that fit in a small round space.

Antique paperweight collectors set an early standard for what was expected in a successful design from artists. Today many collectors consider centering an important value point in acquiring antique paperweights. An un-centered design cuts market value in half. Badly placed bubbles also severely cut the market value of a piece to collectors. The collectors’ emphasis on technical perfection therefore led the 20th century artists to place greater emphasis on encasement quality than on innovative design. The established market demanded that artists not sacrifice quality for the sake of a more dramatic design or message.

Following the heyday of antique paperweights, in the mid 20th century, artists began creating work relying somewhat on updated versions of antique traditions. Between 1920 and 1950 factories were still making paperweights in the U.S., Murano, China (Peking glass), Czechoslovakia and France.

A new paperweight movement started in the 1940’s. Pioneer in glass and dean of the American paperweight revival, Charles Kaziun, resurrected the field in the 1940’s. Kaziun set new artistic standards for encased flamework paperweights; working from his small Massachusetts home studio Kaziun beat a path that all contemporary artists followed. Other artists in America began to open small home studios. These artists introduced several differences from the past: (1.) Individual artists made the work in private studios, (2.) Encased flamework was usually the only type of glass art produced in the studio. (3.) Artists built and owned their own small studio usually at their home, in a garage or basement. (4.) Artists either created the equipment needed by hand or picked up items here and there. (5.) Artists worked alone or with one assistant. (6.) Unlike the artists of the antique genre, 20th century artists always signed and sometimes numbered each piece with their name and date. (7.) There was no instruction. Left over information and working materials filtered down from the earlier century. Retired artists also shared snippets of information or provided reference material written long ago. Twentieth century artists had to figure things out on their own through costly and often disappointing trial and error.

Many collectors did not know very much about what they were buying and knew even less about how paperweights were made. Unlike other art glass forms; the mystery of paperweight making was an intriguing part of its mystique like that surrounding a magician’s repertoire. Once artists figured out the process for themselves, few shared it in order to preserve the intrigue.

Until 1955 paperweight collecting was totally unorganized. Most collectors bought antique paperweights, which at that time were plentiful and affordable. In the early 1950’s Mr. Paul Jokelson, an avid antique paperweight collector and importer, founded the Paperweight Collectors Association. Mr. Jokelson promoted paperweights and created a forum where new artists like Kaziun could show and sell their work and collectors could get together and learn the history. Mr. Jokelson wrote and published books documenting the field, giving it historical credibility. Many other artists followed Charles Kaziun in the 1960’s and 70’s still laboring under a blanket of secrecy about how they created their work. These artists based their designs on the proven formula: round, clean, bubble-free, centered designs still ruled.

Following another antique tradition, many twentieth century artists made multiples of the same design. Collectors liked being able to own popular designs, which further encouraged repetition. Consequently the economics of making multiples created the income needed to run a studio. The major problem was that repetitive designs did not allow the art form to be valued as fine art. Repetition of design kept paperweights a part of the past, to be viewed as craft by the fine art field.

Individual artists were not factories; producing their art was very expensive so repetitive designs were purely an economic choice by artists and dealers. This formula, which worked economically, unfortunately conflicted with the standards of the art world. (If the paperweight revival had pursued individual, one-of-a-kind works of art, the development and progress of encased flamework would have been staggering. The result would be rapidly changing and developing designs.)

By the late 1970’s antique paperweights had become very hard to find and the multiple contemporary work filled the gap. Now in the year 2002 antique paperweights have vanished from the market and are found only in a few specialty galleries and at auctions. With the onset of the modern makers, a fresh supply was readily available all the time to perpetuate the field as the antique weights disappeared into museums and private collections.

By 1976 about a dozen artists in America were creating what they referred to as “lampwork” paperweights. Due to twenty years of promotional effort by Paul Jokelson, the Corning Museum of Glass, and other paperweight dealers, thousands of people were collecting antique and modern paperweights in an organized fashion. Paperweight auctions by large auction houses such as Sotheby’s and Christie’s sold primarily antique paperweights using modern work as a warm up in the first 10 to 20 lots of each auction. Higher value was still placed on antique paperweights as modern artists struggled to create their own niche.

By the 1980’s some paperweight makers grew tired of traditional formats and work formulas and began aspiring to make fine art. These artists began to play with shape as well as expanded design ideas that went beyond the restrictions of antique motifs. Although traditional work remained in demand, these adventuresome artists moved away from multiples of the same designs and toward individual artistic expressions. Leaving behind repetitive designs also left behind their economic benefits. Fewer more individualistic designs moved these artists away from the antique dealer market and toward art galleries as sales outlets.

It has been a long time since there was a useful need for paperweights. We now live in a paperless society. In the 19th century, paperweights were considered inexpensive decorative baubles to be left on desks. In the 21st century glass artists now have a new challenge: to make individual works of fine glass art. Some modern paperweight artists have stepped beyond the traditional with serious designs at prices equal to contemporary art glass. Now, many fine galleries choose not to carry work that is too reminiscent of the antique and not innovative enough to appeal to fine art collectors.

In addition to design, size is an issue. Some critics say that larger scale pieces have greater credibility in art glass circles than small scale encased flamework. On the other hand, thousands of collectors like the intimacy of paperweights because of their small size. Gay Taylor, Director of Wheaton Village in Millville, New Jersey and the sponsor of the Wheaton Glass Lovers’ Weekend says; “ I have always felt that collectors love paperweights because, unlike other forms of glass art, collectors can hold them in their hands and experience them in a way that other glass forms can not be experienced”.

It is true: paperweights and flamework encasements can be held and enjoyed in ways that other forms of glass cannot. Why should small size limit the acceptance of works within the art glass community? What about beauty, emotion, meaning, form? Is it all about size? Large or small, the collecting experience is the same in both cases, just enjoyed in different ways. The intimate glass creations of flamework encasements invite the beholder into the art to connect to the mental and emotional dimension of each piece. Collectors hold the work meditatively and explore the design. Smaller size seems too shallow a criticism for serious art lovers to accept.

The time has come for artists to build a strong modern field that should be called “encased flamework”. Just as Dale Chihuly departed from the style of Louis Comfort Tiffany and Galle, modern encased flameworkers can transcend fashions of design and shape to bring their art to a new higher level as full members of the fine art community.

Encased flamework is a relatively new form of glass art dating only from the 1840’s. Compare this to blown and other art glass forms that have been around for centuries.

All art forms have evolved from a starting point. Like cave paintings to the Sistine Chapel of Michelangelo and Picasso’s works, art is growth in concept and design, large scale and small.

Encasing flamework is a growing segment of fine glass art. The field now needs to be defined by richer content and more depth of emotion in the work. Challenge yourselves by making work that conveys your own important message and become a part of the movement to expand and elevate the field of encased flamework for the 21st century.
The above article may not be reproduced or published without the consent of the author, Debbie Tarsitano.

PCA TX president Art Elder contacted the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum recently and gave them specific details of the donated weight. Amy Day, their Registrar, located the weight and sent photographs to document they had it correctly registered. Because of our interest, they intend to exhibit the weight in a new display of “Gifts of the People” in the near future. Amy asked that we tell our members that they are “grateful for the gift to President Bush and the support of the exhibits at the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum”. The George Bush Presidential Library and Museum is located at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX.

To our knowledge, this is the first time a complete collection of more than 500 pieces will be exhibited from the archive collections of the Baccarat and Saint-Louis factories. Some of the weights are from private collections

For additional information, contact the organizer . Additional information is available from Nancy Alfano.

Jeannine Gappa, of Vetro Glassblowing Studio & Gallery, tells us “we opened our doors in 1998 with one of our main goals being to educate the public about art glass/glassblowing. In pursuing this goal, we have become one of the few studios in the country that is open to the public on a regular basis for live demos. Also in pursuit of this goal, we now offer glassblowing and paperweight-making classes”. Their telephone is 817-232-9436. They are located in Grapevine, TX, in the same building as Grapevine Art Glass, owned by PCA TX member Betty Hansen. Some members will remember that Betty hosted a PCA TX meeting there in 1998.

Friday night attendees enjoyed dinner at Epicures Cafe. On Saturday morning, following a tour of contemporary western art on exhibit in Forsyth Center Galleries, Tim Novak, Director, opened the program with announcements, one being Friends of Forsyth dues have been abolished. This should expand their mailing list for programs and exhibits.

In his talk on Mary Cassatt, the only American and one of the two women artists to exhibit with the Impressionists in France, Tim interwove into his presentation bits of her personal life and how it influenced her work. He pointed out the emotion conveyed and sensuality in her art. We appreciate her talent even more when we consider her ability to create a beautiful painting from the awkward poses of squirming babies in the arms of their mothers. It was a further delight to be able to view one of the famous Cassatt paintings Tim spoke about, “Mother in a Large Hat, Holding Her Nude Baby”. This painting is part of the Runyon endowment and is on permanent exhibit in the Galleries.

Art Elder, geologist, Friends of Forsyth docent, and paperweight scholar, followed Tim with a clear, in-depth look at Clichy paperweights from the Don and Ruth Smith Collection. His handouts included a quote from foremost paperweight authority, Paul Hollister, and a time line of Clichy's history, dating back to 1837. Art mentioned while they were not the earliest of the three French glasshouses to make paperweights, they were considered the finest. Art used slides of examples from the Smith collection to illustrate the unique characteristics that identify and bear out the quality of Clichy weights. Having the weights on hand to examine for the identifying canes, rich colors and other earmarks reinforced Art's informative talk.

After lunch, the group toured exhibits of the Weems collection of antique maps and ship models, and John Cunningham's sculptures in other galleries in the MSC.

The afternoon speaker, Bill Gudenrath, multi-talented Artist in Residence, Corning Museum of Glass, charmed the audience with his easygoing approachable personality and the brilliance in his work. The Houston born artist's fascination with glass led to a job blowing laboratory glass at the tender age of eleven. He showed slides that displayed his artistry in creating exquisite functional crystal objects available at Tiffany's in New York, Bergdorf Goodman, and various galleries.

A cocktail reception and dinner in the Regent's room, followed by dessert in Forsyth Galleries brought a delightful weekend to a close.

I always learn something when I attend these Friends of Forsyth weekends. This time, in addition to exposure to all of the above, I heard the word FOMO, an acronym for Fear of Missing Out, not a happy condition. Avoid FOMO and come to the next Forsyth event. You will be glad you did!

We'll also have on show the complete Runyon Steuben collection, and anticipate having other lent Steuben glass to show as well. As always, the meals will be excellent, the entertainment entertaining and the glass companionship unequalled. There will be a modest charge to participants to help us defray expenses.