Topic: Help Required with Identification

[jimbo1]

Hi All,

I wonder if someone can help point me in the right direction with this weight. Looking on various websites I believe this to be Old English but from there I'm stuck. I have asked a friend to lend me his books, which I shall have next weekend but would like to do a little more research.

The weight is low domed about 3cm high and is quite small 6cm across the base. It seems in remarkable good shape for a 100+ year weight which is making me think its not that age.

Any help is very much appreciated.

James

 

[paperweights]

This is Whitefriars from about 1920. 

[jimbo1]

Many thanks Allan, I always thought Whitefriars paperweights were relatively modern (last 50 years or so) very interesting.

 

[tropdevin]

***

Hi James.

I have to disagree with Allan here.  Your weight is a typical low dome Arculus paperweight, made in the 1920 - 1930 period.  There is no doubt about this: the canes in these weights are the same as in weights still owned by the Arculus descendants, and in the group that the family gave to Broadfield House Glass Museum.

You are correct about Whitefriars being relatively modern.  The first evidence of millefiori paperweights from Whitefriars is in the 1938 catalogue, and they made relatively few until the 1960s.  The myth of 'antique Whitefriars' exists in the US (and not the UK or elsewhere) because a US dealer in the 1950s was selling Walsh Walsh stock with fake 1848 date canes (following the factory closure in 1950) as 'antique Whitefriars'.  That attribution was taken up by Paul Hollister in his encyclopedia (though he did question when they were actually made).  It is being repeated to this day (eg in the recent book Paperweights 101, though with some caveats) despite it being comprehensively debunked in the 1990s.

Anyone coming to my 'Whitefriars 101' talk at the PCA Convention in Tacoma at the end of the month will get to hear much more detail about Whitefriars paperweights, and when they were made!

Alan

[paperweights]

As usual, Alan is correct.  I was sloppy in referring to it as 1920s Whitefriars.  The intention was to attribute it to the group of early Whitefriars predecessors producing paperweights in the 1920s.  Alan's answer is more precise and I agree with the Arculus attribution.