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Paperweight
A paperweight is a small solid object heavy enough, when placed on top of papers, to keep them from blowing away in a breeze or from moving under the strokes of a painting brush (as with Chinese calligraphy). While any object, such as a stone, can serve as a paperweight, decorative paperweights of glass are produced, either by individual artisans or factories, usually in limited editions, and are collected as works of fine glass art, some of which are exhibited in museums. First produced in about 1845, particularly in France, such decorative paperweights declined in popularity before undergoing a revival in the mid-twentieth century. Basic features Decorative glass paperweights have a flat or slightly concave base, usually polished but sometimes frosted, cut glass, cut in one of several variations (e.g. star-cut bases have a multi-pointed star, while a diamond cut base has grooves cut in a criss-cross pattern), although a footed weight has a flange in the base. The ground on w ...
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Yelverton Paperweight Centre
Yelverton Paperweight Centre was a paperweight museum and supplier in Leg O'Mutton, a small hamlet near Yelverton, in the English county of Devon. The museum began as the private collection of a Cornish postmaster, and grew to contain over 1,200 items. It was featured in the humorous travel book, '' More Bollocks to Alton Towers'', which suggested that, "Even if you're sceptical when you arrive, you'll be amazed long before you leave". , the Paperweight Centre had closed and the building was up for sale. History The museum began as the private collection of Bernard Broughton, the postmaster of St Tudy in Cornwall. Broughton's wife was bequeathed a French paperweight in a family member's will, and this inspired Broughton to begin collecting paperweights. When his personal collection had grown, he began to open it for public viewings in his post office building. In 1978, Broughton moved to Yelverton and continued giving the public access to his collection. At the point of his d ...
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Chinese Calligraphy
Chinese calligraphy is the writing of Chinese characters as an art form, combining purely visual art and interpretation of the literary meaning. This type of expression has been widely practiced in China and has been generally held in high esteem across East Asia. Calligraphy is considered one of the four most-sought skills and hobbies of ancient Chinese literati, along with playing stringed musical instruments, the board game "Go", and painting. There are some general standardizations of the various styles of calligraphy in this tradition. Chinese calligraphy and ink and wash painting are closely related: they are accomplished using similar tools and techniques, and have a long history of shared artistry. Distinguishing features of Chinese painting and calligraphy include an emphasis on motion charged with dynamic life. According to Stanley-Baker, "Calligraphy is sheer life experienced through energy in motion that is registered as traces on silk or paper, with time and rhyt ...
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Glass Art
Glass art refers to individual works of art that are substantially or wholly made of glass. It ranges in size from monumental works and installation pieces to wall hangings and windows, to works of art made in studios and factories, including glass jewelry and tableware. As a decorative and functional medium, glass was extensively developed in Egypt and Assyria. Glassblowing was perhaps invented in the 1st century BC, and featured heavily in Roman glass, which was highly developed with forms such as the cage cup for a luxury market. Islamic glass was the most sophisticated of the early Middle Ages. Then the builders of the great Norman and Gothic cathedrals of Europe took the art of glass to new heights with the use of stained glass windows as a major architectural and decorative element. Glass from Murano, in the Venetian Lagoon, (also known as Venetian glass) is the result of hundreds of years of refinement and invention. Murano is still held as the birthplace of modern glass ...
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Art Institute Of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago's Grant Park, founded in 1879, is one of the oldest and largest art museums in the world. Recognized for its curatorial efforts and popularity among visitors, the museum hosts approximately 1.5 million people annually. Its collection, stewarded by 11 curatorial departments, is encyclopedic, and includes iconic works such as Georges Seurat's ''A Sunday on La Grande Jatte'', Pablo Picasso's ''The Old Guitarist'', Edward Hopper's '' Nighthawks'', and Grant Wood's '' American Gothic''. Its permanent collection of nearly 300,000 works of art is augmented by more than 30 special exhibitions mounted yearly that illuminate aspects of the collection and present cutting-edge curatorial and scientific research. As a research institution, the Art Institute also has a conservation and conservation science department, five conservation laboratories, and one of the largest art history and architecture libraries in the country—the Ryerson and B ...
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Corning Museum Of Glass
The Corning Museum of Glass is a museum in Corning, New York in the United States, dedicated to the art, history, and science of glass. It was founded in 1951 by Corning Glass Works and currently has a collection of more than 50,000 glass objects, some over 3,500 years old. History The Corning Museum of Glass (CMOG) is a not-for-profit museum simply dedicated to glass. The Corning Museum of Glass was first created as the Corning Glass Center in 1951. It was built by Corning Glass Works (renamed Corning Incorporated in 1989) as a gift to the nation for the company's 100th anniversary. Thomas S. Buechner, who would later become director of the Brooklyn Museum, was the founding director of the glass museum, serving in the post from 1951 to 1960 and again from 1973 to 1980. Growth and renovations The original museum and library were housed in a building designed by Harrison & Abramovitz in 1951. Gunnar Birkerts designed a new addition, which was opened on May 28, 1980. The S ...
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Millefiori
Millefiori () is a glasswork technique which produces distinctive decorative patterns on glassware. The term millefiori is a combination of the Italian words "mille" (thousand) and "fiori" (flowers). Apsley Pellatt in his book ''Curiosities of Glass Making'' was the first to use the term "millefiori", which appeared in the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' in 1849; prior to that, the beads were called mosaic beads. While the use of this technique long precedes the term "millefiori", it is now most frequently associated with Venetian glassware. Since the late 1980s, the millefiori technique has been applied to polymer clay and other materials. As the polymer clay is quite pliable and does not need to be heated and reheated to fuse it, it is a much easier medium in which to produce millefiori patterns than glass. History The manufacture of mosaic beads can be traced to Ancient Roman, Phoenician and Alexandrian times. Canes, probably made in Italy, have been found as far away as 8t ...
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Glass Blank
A glass blank is a piece of glass that requires additional decoration before it is considered finished. Types of decoration include cutting, engraving, acid-etching, gilding, and enameling. Often the term blank is used in reference to an uncut piece of glass that will be cut or engraved. "Blank" is used in the same way of pottery, especially porcelain, that was often decorated elsewhere, for example by hausmalers. Production The glassmaking process can be divided into several stages, including: melting ingredients to make raw glass, remelting raw glass to make objects (sometimes adding decorations while the glass is still hot), and adding decorations to cooled glass objects. The last stage is often where blanks are involved. These are pieces of glass made with the intention of adding decoration to the cooled piece. Blanks are sometimes made in the same factory or studio in which they are decorated, but blanks can also be made and sold by one company to another company that adds de ...
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Arthur Rubloff
Arthur Rubloff (June 25, 1902 – May 24, 1986) was an American real estate developer who founded Arthur Rubloff & Co. and is credited with naming and developing North Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois into the "Magnificent Mile". Biography Rubloff was born to a Jewish family on June 25, 1902 in Duluth, Minnesota, the eldest of five children born to Solomon Rubloff, an immigrant from Russia who owned several jewelry and dry goods stores. The family moved to Chisholm, Minnesota but lost everything to a fire in 1908 which destroyed the town. In 1914, at the age of 12, Rubloff ran away to Duluth, Minnesota where he worked as galley boy on the ''J.S. Stevenson'', an ore boat. In 1915, he moved to Cincinnati where he worked at a furniture manufacturer. In 1917, he moved to Chicago where his parents had moved and worked for his father's ladies clothing manufacturing company. His parents' factory burned down and his father enlisted his son to lease some real estate he had accumulated ...
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Corning, New York
Corning is a city in Steuben County, New York, United States, on the Chemung River. The population was 10,551 at the 2020 census. It is named for Erastus Corning, an Albany financier and railroad executive who was an investor in the company that developed the community. The city is best known as the headquarters of Fortune 500 company Corning Incorporated, formerly Corning Glass Works, a manufacturer of glass and ceramic products for industrial, scientific and technical uses. Overview The city of Corning is situated at the western edge of the town of Corning and in the southeast part of Steuben County. It is also home to the Corning Museum of Glass, which houses one of the world's most comprehensive collections of glass objects from antiquity to the present. The museum houses the Rakow Library, one of the world's major glass research centers. The city's other major cultural attraction is the Rockwell Museum. It contains an important collection of Western American pain ...
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