Review Of Events
9th Anniversary Celebration Weekend
July 14 & 15, 2001

The Summer Meeting of DVPCA’s 9th Anniversary Celebration Weekend began at 10 AM on Saturday, July 14, 2001 with a Paperweight Fair featuring Guest Dealer Jim Lefever’s collection, a dozen Gordon Smith weights presented by Leo Kaplan, Inc. and a display of members’ Gordon Smith weights as well as weights for sale from -and by- members. President Kruger called the meeting to order at 11:10 AM, recognizing members and guests from afar – glass artist Gordon Smith from Cornville, AZ, Patty Mowatt from Emerald Isle, NC, Bonnie and Gary Geiger from Beaver, PA, Elliott and Roslyn Heith from Flushing, NY, Frank Gardner and Jim Perna from northeastern PA and Henry and Una Blake from Baltimore, MD. Dealers Leo and Ruth Kaplan and family were still on their way from New York City, having run into heavy traffic on the NJ Turnpike, and arrived later. Phil Edelman, also from New York, represented Leo Kaplan’s display of Gordon’s weights. Then VP Leo Kvalnes took over the podium to introduce the Morning Program speaker, Jim Lefever, and his topic “Confessions of an Advertising Weight Collector or The Heresy of Collecting 20th Century Advertising Paperweights”. There are three general categories: 1) Weights of material made by the company, for example, pressed sulfur, ingots of solder or other metals such as lead, zinc and aluminum (Phoenix Metal, Dutch Boy), items encased in acrylic, balls of rubber, miniature bricks, chrome plated steel and cable slices, many with the company name incorporated. 2) Weights with the product encased, for example, miniature roll of paper, slice of steel bar, cable clamps screwed onto a base, metal tin of bag balm, Perrier bottle, watch parts, rectifiers from an electric plant, a memory piece from an early computer. Some are encased in glass and some in acrylic because some of the enclosures would not survive encasing in hot glass. 3) Commemorative weights (often for new items or anniversaries), for example, batteries, items from a copper byproduct from the restoration of the Statue of Liberty, a slice of the radio tower from a Pittsburgh station, ceramic doorknob from a pottery festival, alko-magnets from GE, an encased rifle bullet for a retired teacher (?!), a piece of Skylab from NASA, pieces of the Berlin Wall in both glass and acrylic, a stockholder’s prospectus in miniature, shredded currency and dirt from Graceland (?!) A Question and Answer period followed: How do you keep acrylic from yellowing? Keep out of the sun. Crazing? Nothing helps. Scuffing? Use plastic polish. After appreciative applause, the audience returned to viewing the Paperweight Fair until lunch was served at 12:15.

After a delicious lunch with choice of fish or chicken entrée, President Kruger called the meeting to order at 1:15. He announced a new paperweight puzzle available from the Corning Museum of Glass and the June 21-22, 2002 Marble Artists and Collectors Conference at Wheaton Village; spoke about this year’s PCA Convention at Corning, NY, noting that our membership constituted about 10% of the attendees; mentioned that health concerns kept Theresa and Arthur Greenblatt at home but they would welcome a letter or phone call (4 Northfield Court, Lambertville, NJ 08530, (609) 397-1177; and reminded all that our next meeting will be October 27 at Wheaton Village but that we would be meeting the following day, Sunday, July 15, at Wheaton Village’s Glass Weekend for the closing event of our 9th Anniversary Celebration Weekend. Directions to the Mikelberg home for the Garden Party/Catered Cookout following the meeting were given out by Sandy and Marty M. Twenty “Today’s Raffle” prizewinners were chosen and three “Silent Auction Item” winners were announced, too many to be named individually here (list on request).

Glass artist Gordon Smith and VP Lee Kvalnes collaborated to present the Afternoon Program, “The Undersea World of Gordon Smith”. Lee has extensive scuba diving and undersea photography experience and taught Gordon to scuba dive. Gordon began his career in glass in 1980 at Kontes Glass. Jim and Nontes Kontes encouraged him to work at Wheaton Village. By 1982, he was making floral weights and by 1986, marine weights. In 1994, he relocated from Mays Landing, NJ to Cornville, AZ (near Sedona). He wants his weights to be an accurate depiction of the fragile undersea world. Gordon spoke first. He has a one-man shop in an outbuilding beside his home. Through slides, he illustrated lampwork techniques – the use of the flame and hotplate to prevent thermal shock and how to build rock from glass. Some glass is drawn out into a rod, some, crushed as fine as talcum powder. For scaly animals like fish and snakes, Gordon starts with a clear rod, applies individual scales in a series or row, then rotates the rod in the flame and flattens the scales to the body. Placement of scales is critical. Snakes are often a foot long and take much more time to make than fish. Fish are shaped in three dimensions; fins and bulbous eyes are added. It takes several hours to create scales and make a fish, three days to make a snake. For the first six months, all his snakes broke, due to incorrect technique.

One of Gordon’s slides showed a set-up on a metal disk. The composition is created by arranging the various elements, which have been annealed quickly so he can arrange them cold, on the disk. To encase the lampworked elements into a paperweight, he first heats two blanks of optical crystal, uses a _” rod to dab crystal on its end, picks up more glass, heats it to the consistency of honey and drops the crystal onto the set-up. This takes all of 15 seconds. A vacuum pump helps encase the set-up and eliminate bubbles. Because Gordon works without an assistant, he uses mechanical tools to attach the crystal base onto the weight. He then shapes the weight with a cherry or apple wood paddle, adds a pad of colored glass onto the base, puts in a signature cane, punties up the bottom, heats up one rod and pulls it away from the top of the weight, heats and shapes the top of the weight in a wooden form, and places it in an oven at 1200 degrees to anneal, after knocking it off the punty. Distortions sometimes occur during the encasing process, but Gordon heats the design to 970 degrees so the set-up won’t crack when the liquid crystal hits it. Distortion is usually avoided because the set-up can’t melt fast enough to distort and has no place to go because it is so quickly surrounded by encasing crystal. Gordon makes about 50 weights a year. He may lose three or four, but he is careful to avoid accidents.

Now, Lee spoke and Gordon commented occasionally. Lee showed slides of Gordon’s finished work and corresponding images of marine life. Gordon uses these pictures of aquatic life as guides, though the colors in books may be off compared to real life because the fish are photographed in aquariums and the flash affects color. Real fish may be 12” or so but the glass model is only about 1”, looking about 1 _” in the weight. Gordon makes glass coral with real-life imperfections like bleaching or breaking; according to Lee, coral is rarely perfect in real life. Gordon’s shells are quite accurate, too. Some weights are oriented from the point of view of a snorkeler, looking down on the scene from above. Some are hockey-puck shaped upright plaques. Gordon’s “Chimera” series combines mermaids (or mermen) with forms of dichroic glass which has a chemical coating and retains its shimmering look even when encased. After a standing ovation (strongly urged by the President!), a Question and Answer session followed. Gordon noted that a vacuum pump aids encasement but can also break delicate elements like flower petals or fish fins. He said all his texture techniques developed from his creation of strawberry textures.

President Kruger then closed the formal meeting at 2:30, inviting the entire gathering to re-convene at 4 PM at the Roslyn, PA home of Martin and Sandy Mikelberg for the now-traditional summertime Garden Party/Catered Cookout. This celebration of DVPCA’s 9th Anniversary was a resounding success as some 45 guests wandered through the rooms of the Mikelberg home, admiring the paperweights and other glass and art collections and enjoying the delicious food, until about 8 PM.

The next day, Sunday, July 15, eighteen DVPCA members and guests convened at 11 AM at Wheaton Village in Millville, NJ, to continue our anniversary celebration. After being given tickets and an orientation by President Kruger, the group was free to explore the offerings of the Village, including the Museum of American Glass and other permanent exhibits, the T.C. Wheaton Glass Factory, the Arthur Gorham Paperweight Shop and the Crafts Gallery and other shops and, especially, in the Village’s new Exhibition Hall, a display of contemporary glass art (including many paperweights) by nineteen American and international galleries--a celebration of Wheaton’s Glass Weekend 2001. This proved to be a fitting conclusion to our weekend of glass art and artists.

Respectfully submitted,