Crystal paperweight millefiori

BLUE CRYSTAL PAPERWEIGHT MILLEFIORI :

BLUE CRYSTAL PAPERWEIGHT MILLEFIORI, Stunning crystal paperweight, high quality. No bubble, no defect is visible on the surface, a superb achievement from Scotland. One of rare craftsman able to realize press-paper of high quality for an affordable price.

♦ CRYSTAL PAPERWEIGHT HISTORY :

Nineteenth-century paperweights boast many different styles and techniques of glassmaking, but of these millefiori most profoundly influenced the development of the paperweight artist. The fundamental elements of millefiori (the rod, the bead, and cane) had been employed by glassmakers for approximately 3,500 years. But just as the mythological imagery of Ovid and Vergil were transmuted by Shakespeare’s genius into his Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595/96), and both the classical iconography and Shakespeare’s interpretation of it melded and reshaped in 1826 by Felix Mendelssohn into an identically titled but unique musical expression, so nineteenth-century glassmakers synthesized ancient elements of their art with later technological developments to create something totally new and in keeping with the taste of their times.

Then, glassmakers of the Eighteenth Dynasty (1570-1349 B.C) made glass rods, principally as a means of producing beads, which were simply snippets cut from the heated rods. Later glass craftsmen learned to make progressively more intricate beads and to bundle and fuse rods into canes. Complex canes were first fashioned by Roman glassmakers; the canes and other elements were bundled together, heated to fuse, and drawn out while in a plastic state to a greatly diminished diameter. The canes were then cut transversely and the slices were available for utilization.