Paul J. Stankard:
Homage to Nature
by: Ulysses Grant Dietz
1996, Harry N. Abrams Inc., New York, NY
160 pages, $39.95 hardbound.
flyleaf: “Since childhood, nature has always been important to Paul Stankard, and now as the world’s leading glass paperweight artist, this interest has become the defining signature of his work. Flowers such as roses, lilacs, and orchids are depicted as are a host of fantasy flowers that the artist creates in his studio, located in southern New Jersey. To look at a Stankard paperweight is to be momentarily fooled into believing that the artist has preserved a living flower in glass, when, in fact, he has created one entirely from spun filaments. Equally present are insects such as bees and damselflies, or blueberries and glistening raspberries. Certainly the most unusual features are his earth spirits or “root people,” tawny colored creatures deliberately made to resemble living plant roots. Words, too, play a role, again reinforcing natural processes. Here the artist creates mosaic word canes, spelling out words like seed, wet, and scent, to name a few, which he then embeds in his floral creations. A more complex application of Stankard’s paperweight skill is the formation of what the artist calls botanicals, which are upright cloistered glass objects, sometimes in diptych and triptych formations. Each is a unique object and each is a highly sophisticated and and elegant tribute to nature’s beauty.
In Paul Stankard: Homage to Nature, decorative arts curator Ulysses Grant Dietz writes with ease and affection about this gregarious, immensely talented artist. With a background in technical glassmaking, Stankard began creating his first paperweights in 1971: by the end of that decade he had become nationally known. Today his work is in the collections of such museums as The Corning Museum of Glass; The Art Institute of Chicago; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
More than 180 photographs by fine arts photographer John Bigelow Taylor display close to 200 paperweights and botanicals made by Paul Stankard. Also included are photographs showing the actual preparation and assembly of the flowers, root people, and insects encased in glass. No other glass art book has ever shown a glass artist’s process of creation as it is depicted here.
Collectors of glass and beautiful objects will be dazzled and moved by the artistry and appreciation Paul Stankard brings to natural forms.”
