Station: [40] Paperweight Cabinet

Sprecher

You’re standing in front of a selection of 600 glass paperweights from Germany, Bohemia and the rest of Europe. A collector named Peter von Brackel from Bad Honnef collected the paperweights dating from between 1840 to 1945 and gave them to the Wertheim Museum of Glass on permanent loan in 2011.

Sprecherin

Brackel’s Collection begins with the „classics,“ that mark the beginning of paperweight production at the end of the 1830s and beginning of the 1840s. Production started in Italy, Silesia and Bohemia but was soon picked up in France, England, Scotland, Belgium, Russia and North America. Almost all classical-style paperweights were produced in a minority of glass foundries as part of their official production programme using complicated and time-consuming procedures.