John Gilvey designs exquisite glass paperweights by building layers of scenery within clear glass balls using lampworking techniques and 27 years of experience. He describes his style as lyrical post-modern realism. His works are a single poem of light and color suspended in time.
Gilvey creates a mermaid paperweight with an ocean scene inside and a delicate mermaid on the outside. The first step is called pulling cane, which means making spaghetti strands of glass. It is like pulling taffy and takes two people to do it. It is done by putting colored glass in the annealing oven until hot (900 F degrees). Gilvey takes a rod called a pontil and gathers glass from the furnace. It is formed into a cylinder by rolling it onto a steel table called a marver. One person holds the rod while the other pinches the end, and they walk away from each other, pulling it as long as the space allows and breaking it into shorter pieces after it's cooled. To create fine lines like the lines on the reeds, Gilvey melts stripes by having his assistant follow his glass strand with a torch. Gilvey also crushes glass into powder to make the ocean floor. Once these steps are complete, he can begin making the paperweight.
Gilvey begins by gathering glass onto the pipe and rolling it in crushed glass. The assistant gathers clear glass onto a pipe, heats it, and brings it to Gilvey, who applies it to the cylinder by cutting it off with shears. The piece is reheated and rolled onto the marver again. Next, he gathers clear molten glass to form the ball of the paperweight. He shapes the glass using wet newspaper folded into a mitt and cradles it while sitting and rolling the pipe up and down the arms of his bench. Next comes the mermaid. This takes a lot of time and is very critical due to many reheats. If not reheated enough, it would become too cold and crack. After the pieces of her body are formed, strands of hair are formed and put on individually. The paperweight must be heated just right so that the mermaid (on the outer surface) does not get too hot and melt into a blob, but hot enough to make her neck as small as possible. The assistant grabs the paperweight with a pair of tongs and taps it until it cracks off. It is annealed overnight and finished the next day with a diamond grinder and a felt wheel (with a water and pumice mix), creating a very smooth surface. The final result is astounding. Each paperweight is a work of art and a beautiful melding of glass and nature.
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