Paperweight

In the 19th-century interiors, the popularity of small decorative items reached its peak. Any free space on furniture was occupied by such items as figurines made of porcelain and metal, vases, caskets, vials, cut and painted glass, books, letters, candlesticks and flowers. The 19th century is a period when epistolography flourished. Responding to this phenomenon, the market abounded in numerous stationery elements such as pen stands, ink-wells and paperweights. The paperweight from the Wilanów collection is a testimony to that fashionable trend. It catches the eye with its interesting form: though it is made of glass, it imitates a small book with a black cover and a gilded edge with glass amber beads in the corners. Originally, the book’s decoration was gilded, but it abraded over the years. It was later brazed (perhaps along the gilded lines). The centre of the cover shows a little painted bouquet of flowers.

The Wilanów collection includes several 19th-century paperweights made of black hyalith. This new type of deeply black non-transparent glass was invented at the beginning of the 19th century. Its inventor was Georg Franz August Longueval, count of Buquoy (1781–1851). He was a mathematician, a physicist, a chemists, a philosopher as well as an owner of several glass factories. In the course of his experiments he discovered a new recipe for deep black glass mass. He gave it the name of “hyalith”, inspired by the Greek word for “glass” (“hyalos”). Its production started in 1817 and it quickly became very popular. Though the count of Buquoy had the patent, soon other factories started producing similar items in response to the growing demand. The popularity of hyalith, however, lasted for a relatively short period, i.e. until the 1840s, giving place to other types of glassware.