Topic: Chinese Millifiori Paperweight?

[Lustrousstone]

The main problem is you are generally talking second hand. These items bought new and retail often have labels at least relating to safety and you can of course always return to the the retailer with your complaint. When items are sold for their decorative value as the vast majority are, people remove the undecorative label, as is natural if it is obtrusive. The collector market is a mere fraction of the buying public (who often don't care where something is made only that it meets their requirements, be they functional or decorative) and the collectors who buy second hand are just some of the collector market.

Mass produced items are rarely sold to meet the needs of future collectors, merely to meet the current needs of the great buying public. There is no profit in the secondary market for the manufacturer so why should they care. Be realistic please

[Fuhrman Glass]

check out this site if you haven't seen it: http://contempglass.org/seeing-glass/glass-for-sale .
this is the secondary market and who can determine in what country some of these were originally produced. Some of these artists have worked all over the world and I'm sure none of these pieces have the country of origin on them. Anyways, I thought this was an interesting site and really shows the "secondary" market for contemporary art glass. Note that anything under $1000 cannot be listed. check out the wanted items, anyone here have some of these setting in their closet.
sure out of my budget. I guess that glass has attained some higher levels in the "art world" in recent years.

[Otis Orlando]

There is no profit in the secondary market for the manufacturer so why should they care. Be realistic please

  Because we all live on this planet and should care about the environment!  Cheap labour, cheap goods and no governing laws to protect the workers and consumers?  I'm real for sure..  Have you seen the news lately?

Wow! Fuhrman Glass,   a very interesting site indeed.  Thanks! I will look into this further, later today.

Regarding safety, for new items in the UK I think this might fall under the Sale of Goods Act, and be the responsibility of the retailer. So they would need to check that a paperweight was 'safe' before putting it on the shelves, which would mean checking and testing for any risks (not sure what if anything this might be with a glass paperweight, but for example being radioactive, or emitting poisons) and being able to prove that they had done so.

There is a significant problem with labelling paperweights, of course - the labels often fall off, or get removed because they interfere with the design.

Alan

Hi Alan,  Yes, I would entirely agree with you on that.   It is most definitely a serious issue and needs to be addressed as a way forward in this 'realistic' world we currently live in.   Thank you very much for your input.   It definitely helps me understand the complexity of laws, especially pertaining to, 'The Sale of Goods Act'.
 

[bigbri]

Were not alot of scottish weights mass produced and pumped out to tourists and visitors alike,bread and butter is the term often used so where is the line between bread and butter and mass produced.?

[flying free]

Quantity?
I am trying to look up some numbers as this answer is totally irrelevant without knowing the numbers - but I remember looking on a website at Chinese produced items, and they were being sold to retailers for very low cost... but the quantities that had to be ordered in one batch were gigantic (and that was just for vases, not paperweights).

I think that Derek?  (I think it was Derek) informed me of some numbers of Caithness production (I think it was - need to find the posts to confirm this), so it would be interesting to compare the quantities of what might be 'bread and butter' production, versus 'mass production'.

Alan mentions some quantities here
http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,43283.msg241559.html#msg241559

'I recall a Newspaper article a year or so ago which recounted how some people in Murano were arrested for fraud, and over 13 million (yes, 13 million) glass items of Chinese manufacture were impounded from a warehouse. They had been labelling these and selling them as Murano. The problem, as I understand it, is that under EU rules you can import something into Murano for, say, 1 unit of currency; do work of value 1.1 unit of currency (eg sticking a label on and putting it in a box); and then label it quite legally as Made in Murano.'


I'll come back once I get a minute to find the sources for comparison
m

[flying free]

This was one of the posts I recall
there was some discussion of estimated numbers of total Caithness production of paperweights over 30 years and the estimated total over 30years was  3 million

http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,37990.msg210197.html#msg210197

I'll try and find any others but you can see when compared to 13 million items being impounded at one time, there is quite a large difference.  Of course those 13 million items will have come from different suppliers and they will not have all been paperweights I would guess - China is a vast country and as far as I know has many glassmaking enterprises, far more than say the number of makers putting out 'bread and butter' production in this country would have been.
m

[flying free]

http://www.glassmessages.com/index.php/topic,41834.msg271340.html#msg271340
This was a post I put on last year on Chinese production of glass.

As I said in the post regarding the link as it was at that time:
'In the link I give below,just on the first page the minimum order for one of the vases is 10,000 pieces!'

It isn't directly comparable as I wasn't looking at paperweights at the time so I can't give numbers for those, but I think this demonstrates the kind of quantities of one item that are flooding into the market.
 
I can't imagine Caithness produced 10,000 of any one item but I really don't know?
m

[SophieB]

One should not forget also that the 'bread and butter' product of today may be the desirable collectable of tomorrow. For instance, quite a few collectors (myself included) collect 'Chinese whites'; originally, these were made for the export market (and could not be more 'bread and butter' production), but now there are highly sought after.

SophieB

[Lustrousstone]

We've lost the point of this. The issue was why aren't Chinese paperweights labelled. The answer was because they are mass produced in vast quantities for the gift and decorative markets not for the current or the future collectibles markets. Which was the point of my comment here     

There is no profit in the secondary market for the manufacturer so why should they care [about labelling for second hand buyers]. Be realistic please

So Otis said

  Because we all live on this planet and should care about the environment!  Cheap labour, cheap goods and no governing laws to protect the workers and consumers?  I'm real for sure..  Have you seen the news lately?

Which was nothing to do with my answer, which solely about labelling for identification purposes.

Lots of bread and butter items are collectibles now - to give a non-paperweight example you only have to look at the huge depression glass market but it was neither made or sold with a view to future collectors, merely for putting your bread and butter on!

[Otis Orlando]

I am aware how cumbersome this can be, that is, the influx of paperweights that are mass produced with no form of real identity.   Like I said, this can create issues for the collector, retailer and consumer.    It is important, especially in this day and age that there is control, which also should incorporate standards of safety.  A lot of paperweights comes via. the market as Murano and sometimes labelled as Murano, when in fact, they are actually Chinese.   Properly labelling and marking paperweights, is the way forward, as far as I am concerned and I am sure, most of you would agree.  A lot of time is being exhausted trying to identify even the most modernist of  paperweights.