Millefiori paperweight

Millefiori, which translates from the Italian as "a thousand flowers" is a method of decorating glass with slices of coloured canes in flower design, embedded in clear molten glass. The technique was known as far back as the first century BC and was revived and modified in Venice in the 16th century. The process was used to make paperweights in Venice and Bohemia in the 19th century, and the technique spread to France, England and the United States.

Paperweights, used to hold down papers, and most commonly made in glass, evolved in Venice in the early nineteenth century, and spread to France via Bohemia about 1845, where the finest examples were produced by three factories: Baccarat, Clichy and St Louis. Examples from these manufacturers are mostly unmarked and widely faked and imitated and thus a minefield for the uninitiated. The most popular motif is millefiori ('thousand flowers'), though fruit, single flowers, insects, and other small objects are often used as well as portraits and view. The cheaper paperweights use air bubbles as decoration. The classic paperweights are round more... and domed, but lesser weights were also made in the form of pyramids and rectangles. The early period of paperweights is reckoned to have ended in 1870 but some 20th century manufacturers such as Lalique, Kosta Boda, Whitefriars and Caithness Glass have produced some fine examples. The great majority of paper weights are unmarked, and glass rarely shows its age.

Paperweights are also made in gold, silver, silver plate, hardstone, amber, ceramic, ivory, timber and other materials. less...