Maine Sunday Telegram, Aug. 14, 1994
Paperweights: An Inside Look

By SELBY FRAME
Staff Writer

Rick Ayotte earned his immortality with a duck's tongue.

It's just a sliver, really - a tiny red protrudence from a small yellow bill. It took Ayotte hundreds of hours to get it right.

His red-tongued duck swims in deep blue water. The water rests in pure, clear crystal. And the whole scene fits into the palm of his hand.

Ayotte, of Nashua, N.H., is one of the country's leading paperweight artists. His is a craft of miniature perfection, of tiny worlds trapped in glass eggs. Once dismissed as sentimental souvenirs, paperweights are gaining truck as one of the most skilled mediums of glass artists.

Ayotte's glass paperweights are among those on display at the "Art of the Paperweight, Challenging Tradition," exhibition at the Jones Museum of Glass and Ceramics in Sebago, through Sept. 25. The show was organized by the Art Museum of Santa Cruz County and is making only four museum stops. With over 100 paperweights - many of them valuable antiques - it is one of the most prestigious collections the rural, 16-year-old Jones Museum has ever exhibited.

"Glass is an unusual medium. It's fragile but it's permanent and strong," says Ayotte. "The way it dazzles and moves. And the dome of the paperweight enhances and makes it come alive. If you're buying some of the great works, you're buying something that has never been done before. It's unique, brand-new, permanent."

They are beautiful and mysterious, but the functional use of the paperweight is negligible.

They first were crafted in France in the 1840s, when few people were literate or wealthy enough to own writing paper. Almost immediately, they became art objects for the great glass houses of Baccarat, Saint Louis and Clichy, who competed to surpass each other in artistry and innovation. They created swirling globes of brightly colored spokes; banks of tiny flowers clustered in miniscule bouquets; glass strawberries nestled in ruby-colored clumps.

Eventually the paperweight's popularity spread across the Continent and United States. New England glass companies, such as the Mount Washington Glass Co. in South Boston, the Sandwich Glass Co. and Massachusetts' New England Glass Co. began producing paperweights with colorful flowers, cameos and miniature scenes.

These were the days before the proliferation of the photograph, when visual likenesses had the power to astonish the viewer - and to memorialize their subjects. The first paperweights, called sulphides, were white-clay cameo reliefs covered in a dome of crystal. They were intended to pay homage to famous figures. Napoleon, naturally, was a popular subject.

Another popular technique emerged, known as lampwork, named for the oil lamps Victorian glassworkers used to heat glass rods they shaped into flowers, fruits and animals. These are highly stylized images of flora and fauna, of butterflies with rainbow wings.

"These paperweights are visual metaphors of their time," says Dorothy-Lee Jones, director of the Jones Museum. "In the Victorian era it was common to convey sentiments with flowers. The rose, the pansy, primrose, wheat flower, had obvious meaning. The rose meant love, the pansy remembrance.

"I think a lot of people today would think … it's pretty sappy to think about, 'I give you a violet for your thoughts.' But all of that flower connotation was part of their serious flirtation."

Arguably the most skilled glasswork technique, if not the most time-consuming, is called millefiori. The term translates from the Italian as "thousand flowers," an apt description. Circles of brightly patterned glass are stretched like taffy until they are tiny canes, bearing the large patter in miniature. Several of these canes are molded together, creating a complex flower, much like an anemone.

"The technique has been likened to alchemy," says Jones. "It's almost impossible to believe how these come together."

Under the lighted displays at the Jones Museum, the millefiori globes are luminous gems. A Baccarat millefiori piece made in 1847 has canes of flowers rising from a white, lacey background. Each strand of lace - and there are hundreds of them - is individually crafted. They are made from glass strings that are fused together with other strands and folded into ribbon-like patterns.

"Aaaccch. Everyone asks you the same stupid question," barks Ayotte, who uses a form of lampwork in his pieces. "How long does it take to make? I really don't know. So if it took me one day to make, it also took 20 breakages to do this."

Fervent following
The art form is labor intensive, which may account for the prices the pieces fetch, anywhere from $300 to $50,000, says Jones. They appeal to a small, but fervent, group of collectors, she says.

Paperweight construction varies, but generally, they are begun by shaping molten glass on a metal mold. The designs are made from bundled canes or painted in colorful layers of solid, see-through and semi-see-through glass.

Once the design is finished, it is encased in liquid crystal, usually in the shape of a sphere or egg, and the mold is removed. Encasement is a tricky balance of temperatures, since both the molded and poured glass are heated.

"The internal design has to be kept at a temperature close to that of the gather (molten crystal) or it will crack," says Jones. "The coverage of crystal tends to brighten the colors underneath, and when light fills the piece the dome magnifies the internal subject matter. Colors don't fade at all from the day they were laid in."

It is that permanence that seems to delight Ayotte.

"This is really just an art form in a permanent medium," he says. "It's a lot like paint. You heat it up, then you paint, try to make the thing stay alive. Ten thousand years from now, you pick it up, it'll be the same. I've already got my immortality."

Ayotte is part of a body of contemporary glass artists rediscovering the art of the paperweight. Some of the techniques of the last century have been lost, but many new techniques are being invented.

Many have strayed from purely decorative designs and are experimenting with abstracts and botanical still lifes. Forest scenes, wildflower stands, birds in flight, schools of fish are common themes.

Ayotte's duck tongue is a good example of the innovation possible in a miniature medium. He says he threw away dozens of failures before stumbling on the right process to craft his mallard ducks, which are set in a colorful pond scene with a moss-covered bank.

The birds appear to be swimming to shore to nibble a stand of lilies. The blue water has a sheen of pollen and tiny waves ripple from their moving bodies. A tiny, red tongue reaches out toward the vegetation.

"I started with the tongue and worked the whole bird backwards," says Ayotte. "I pushed it in with a needle one-eight-inch thick. Then you build on top of that, add head, eyes. You have to put a crystal support beneath their beaks.

Dorothy-Lee Jones turns a weight over between her hands, peering through a faceted crystal dome at the perfect red rose frozen inside.

"What is there about it that is so fascinating?" she asks, half to herself. "It's a frenetic world we live in. And here is something so pristine. A flower that is not going to age."

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