Paperweight with Flowers

Object Name: 
Paperweight with Flowers

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Object Name: 
Paperweight with Flowers
Place Made: 
Accession Number: 
57.3.186
Dimensions: 
Overall H: 5.9 cm, Diam (max): 8 cm
Location: 
On Display
Date: 
about 1845-1855
Credit Line: 
Gift of the Honorable and Mrs. Amory Houghton
Web Description: 
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.
Department: 
Provenance: 
Lindon, Maurice, Former Collection
Houghton, The Honorable Amory (American, 1926-2020), Former Collection
1957
Houghton, Laura (Mrs. Amory), Source
1957
Category: 
Primary 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.
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) illustrated, pp. 90, 152, #219; BIB# 20097