In an intimate display, wedged behind a display of medieval armor, the ROM offers us an astounding look at 250 paperweights that come from one of the finest public collections in North America. These paperweights, enhanced by a few doorstops, small ancient vases and bowls, and samples of the kind of blown glass horses we associate with country fair artisans—only here they are of an antique nature and harnessed to a coach of intricate design—reveal that glass is a very special material that has a complex nature not equaled by other materials.

Today people have no use for paperweights other than as a collector's item. We are not the effusive letter writers that our forebears were only a few decades ago. As a consequence, if we have desks at home, they hold a computer, not paper and an inkwell. If our desks are littered, it is with the various paraphernalia associated with computers in an ever more paperless world, but not with personal stationery. Besides, when has one entered a home in which doorstops are used? Our homes are often designed on an open concept with few doors, and they are less drafty than the houses of a few generations ago. Now we have electric light to brighten our desks so there is no need to place the desk by a window as it used to be the case in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Hence, we need neither paperweights to stop papers from flying off our desks, nor doorstops to prevent doors from slamming shut from a gust of wind.

The Victorians, the most prolific of all letter writers, needed paperweights because literacy became an almost universal skill in their age. But they didn't want just any old thing to hold down their papers. They wanted objects that were colorful and enjoyable to look at. They wanted objects associated with a sense of luxury. Victorians, despite their outwardly acerbic social conditions in which one did not step over certain lines of personal decorum, loved intricate, colorful, even garish designs. Glass factories on the Continent and in Britain obliged only too happily the Victorians' need for items of luxury.

It all began with an Italian by the name of Pietro Bigaglia (1786-1876) who displayed what is now called 'scrambled cane paperweights' at an industrial exhibition in Vienna for which he won a gold medal in 1845. But it was in France in the 1840s that some unknown glass maker first put a clear glass dome over canes or flamework to create the first glass paperweights as we know them now. This globe allowed magnification of the underlying flame- or canework that gave the spectator a clear view of a tiny world made of glass. With this globe a fad was born that lasted many decades. Even today, some modern glass artists still use the clear glass globe for the paperweights they create for collectors.

From looking at the ROM's Glass Worlds paperweight exhibit it is easy to understand why people collect them. They have a charm about them that is not easily resisted. The ROM's display is the first major exhibit of its kind in Canada. It was made possible through the donation of two separate collections to the ROM. Alice Baldwin Hall, who specialized in collecting French paperweights from the Classic period of the mid-19th century, also added a few mid-20th century works by American Charles Kazium (1919-92) and Paul Ysart (1904-1991), who though born in Spain, grew up in Scotland and worked there exclusively. Hall also added a few more current paperweights by unknown artists from around the world. This collection, now owned by the ROM, consisted of 281 paperweights and related objects.

The second collection came to the ROM from the estate of J.A. Howson 'Brock' Brocklebank and his wife, Millie. They collected mostly contemporary American paperweights. Among the artists whose work they collected are Paul Stankard (b. 1943) and Rick Ayotte (b. 1944).

In 1984 the ROM received 135 modern American paperweights from the Brocklebank estate. At the same time, Brocklebank bequeathed a special fund to the ROM to ensure its collection can grow with new acquisitions. This has allowed the museum to purchase paperweights by Canadian glass artists, some of which are especially appealing to our modern sensibilities. We are, after all, not Victorians, and we tend to prefer more abstract imagery, even in glass paperweights. I include myself in this category. The two paperweights I own are of modern design, and are created by Maltese artists, who are famous for their Mdina glass creations. In fact, I am amazed that the ROM has no example in its collection from this small island nation. The Mdina glassmakers have a magnificent sense for design and color that is worthy of being noted here.

The Glass Worlds' curator is Brian Musselwhite, an assistant curator at the ROM. He has a fine eye for the design values of these objects that some might dismiss as mere artifacts, objects of a former utilitarian use. Obviously, even our forebears thought so as well, because it is a modern phenomenon to associate a specific artist with such objects rather than the glass foundry where they were produced. In Victorian days the men who satisfied the needs of the middle and upper classes of Britain were not granted the status of artist. At best they were artisans whose craft needed no particular recognition.

The ROM's Glass Worlds exhibit is accompanied by two videos about paperweight making. One takes the viewer right into the glass maker's fiery world in which silica, mixed with other components, are turned into glass, and shows glass workers pulling and cutting glass canes for making millefiori designs. The other shows the American artist, Victor Trabucco, who demonstrates how he creates the flamework that is placed inside a clear glass globes. Trabucco is well known for the creation of flamework salamanders. The ancients used to believe that salamanders live in fire and so this amphibian became the symbol of glass workers, and eventually also of firefighters. As any Harry Potter fan will tell you, the salamander is an important symbol that we muggles might not appreciate. So, those who have never been in a glass blower's studio, these videos should be the starting point of the exhibit as they will foster a greater understanding of what is entailed in creating paperweights.

The exhibit is divided into several sections to give the viewer a better understanding of the various periods, locations and styles of paperweights. Each one holds its own fascination. The exhibit also displays samples of paperweights that are faceted, some have a base, there is even a cubed one by a Swedish glassmaker, and some with semi-oval shapes.

The Early Classic French paperweights created between 1845-55 at such glass works as Baccarat, Saint-Louis, and Clichy suffer mostly from excessive decoration and display a touch of what one might call "kitsch." Yet one of the Baccarat weights, depicting blue clematis, is profoundly elegant, as is a faceted Saint-Louis piece that features an arrangement of a blue pansy with camomile flowers. Clichy offers an example of a lime green and white paperweight that swirls from a central white and green cane that is surrounded by a small cluster of white star canes. It also escapes the heavy ornamentation of the many other Clichy examples in the show.

A green glass doorstop from 1850s England is worth mentioning. It contains three silver foil flowers rising on an air bubble from a flowerpot made of minute bubbles. On a more modern note there is Paul Ysart's Dragonfly from between 1950-60. It floats over a dark blue ground surrounded by widely spaced pale-blue edged canes. Also of modern provenance is an Italian cone-shaped weight that contains a double spiral of white filigree with central pink canes.

American John Simpson created the dramatic Megaplanet weight in 1989 that speaks more to modern sensibilities, while Paul Joseph Stankard's 2001 piece, Pineland Pickerel Weed Botanical with Blueberries, Ants, Damselfly and Mask harkens back to a more sentimental, late Victorian time or even the Edwardian period of the early 1900s, when woodland nymphs were still widely believed to exist. I'm sure Conan Doyle, who gave us Sherlock Holmes, would have loved this piece as he was a firm believer in fairies.

I, on the other hand, would not refuse Canadian Mark Armstrong's 1999 cone-shaped Gold Veil that features a purple cushion with a central air bubble surrounded by rising bubbles with gold leaf at the top, nor would I refuse Galaxy by Canadian Toan Klein, created in 1981. It features a deep blue-black swirl with iridescent white chips below golf leaf.

The variety of objects in this display is huge and it is impossible to list every one that appeals to this writer, or that one cannot relate to on a personal basis. Yet, given the intricate labor, the broad imagination used to design each one of the paperweights in this display, one ends up being enchanted, nevertheless.

Youngsters will perhaps respond greatly to the many paperweights that contain various animals and plants, all created out of flamework. Think back to Harry Potter and the salamander. Kids will remember that the Glacius spell is needed to put out its fire and turn it cold. And, when looking at Ysart's Three Mice, they'll surely remember 'Three Blind Mice'. Consequently, this is a show that will appeal to both young and old. It is the kind of exhibit that entertains while it subtlety educates as well. For youngsters it will certainly be an eye-opener to find out how the portraits of the Royal Family—including a young Victoria—have been captured in glass. Glass Worlds will tell them as it will tell them how the three mice got inside their dark-colored globe.

Detail from a Bohemian
Glassworks from the
Middle Ages*

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