You can see why Paul Stankard is called the father of the modern art glass paperweight. It seems almost an insult to call the artworks he creates paperweights. Paperweights have such an association with kitsch objects. The nicknacks that littered our grandparent’s shelves and found value in their sentimentality (at least to me). But there is nothing garish or ironic about Stankard’s work. Sentimental perhaps, part of the beauty in his glass works is his ability to suspend an image of the natural world in time. The results feel so realistic you would be forgiven for mistaking it for the real thing.
I first hear of Paul Stankard in the Origins episode of Craft in America. His work has really pushed the work from craft to art. But the form, the paperweight, still holds his objects as a piece of craft.