Paul Hollister advises Geraldine Casper on paperweight acquisitions for the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum of Glass in 1974. Paul Hollister Consultation with Geraldine Casper, March 25, 1974. (Rakow title: Casper [sound recording] / with Paul Hollister, BIB ID: 168410). Clip length: 06:00.
Time stamp: 00:00
Clip 1: Paul Hollister discusses a double overlay basket paperweight with Geraldine Casper. Clip length: 03:05.
Paul Hollister (PH): —basket. Or a double overlay basket. There was one that just came up in London and it went for something like 250 bucks.
Geraldine Casper (GC): Mmm.
PH: And I have a photograph of it, and it really wasn’t very interesting. It was a close millefiori. The handle was messy. And I think most of the handles if you can find one are gonna be messy. But I don’t think you’re gonna find one, in a long time. [pause for four seconds] I think it’d be—a good Bacchus encased overlay [sounds as of paper being flipped over] would be interesting to have, but as I say difficult to find. Now there was another one that came up in a sale at Parke-Bernet [Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, New York] recently. It was a Bacchus encased overlay. I saw it. I had seen it before. It had been in the Norvin H. Green sale at Parke-Bernet in 19—what was it, ‘52, or ‘62 or something like—
GC: Mmm.
PH: One of the—I guess ’52, an early paperweight sale. It brought—it was called Saint-Louis—and it brought 750 dollars. In the last sale at Parke-Bernet the same paperweight came up, and I was chasing that weight around Cape Cod all summer. I saw it. It was not—a collector showed it to me—it was not good. It was filled with specks and cobwebs and chunks of things and so forth. And the bouquet was very dull, flat, and uninteresting.
GC: Mm-hmm.
PH: And it went for 800 dollars.
GC: Hmm.
PH: 50 dollars more than it had gone for 20 years ago. So I don’t think you’re gonna find an attractive one. If you do find one, you might, but they’re very hard to find, and they’re not really—what you ought to look for is a beautiful Bacchus concentric. I think you could use another one. You’ve got one. You may have two there; that other one may be a Bacchus also, in there with the lady’s head in the middle.
GC: Mm-hmm.
PH: I think you could use a good one that was either a close millefiori which had great big canes and was well done and rather jazzy, or a beautiful concentric of pastel colors, but in the mushroom field you’ve got everything there is. You’ve got the best ones. And you probably wouldn’t have to pay more than 500 dollars for it. Now there was a Bacchus on a yellow ground that came up a year ago at Parke-Bernet, and that went for 500 dollars, and it was a very beautifully done weight.
GC: Mm-hmm.
PH: It was a real good weight. It would look just great in your case. Bright sulphur yellow. Canary yellow.
Time stamp: 03:07
Clip 2: Paul Hollister discusses Saint-Louis, Clichy, and Baccarat paperweights with Geraldine Casper. Clip length: 02:53
Paul Hollister (PH): Where are we? Green carpet ground.
Geraldine Casper (GC): Yes.
PH: Well, you’ve made the notes on that. You’ve said that it’s more like—that we’ve got two green carpet grounds. We’ve got one from Saint-Louis, and we’ve got a Clichy barber pole twist green. That’s what they call ’em, barber pole twist. And you don’t have a—
GC: Oh.
PH: —and you have a Baccarat green one, too. You don’t have a Baccarat cauliflower.
GC: Let’s see, we’re on the carpet ground. We’re not talking about the che—
PH: We’re on the green—number 30, green carpet ground.
GC: Yes, right. We have a Clichy and a Saint-Louis.
PH: You’ve got a—
GC: And—
PH: You’ve got that wild—
GC: And—
PH: —Clichy moss ground—
GC: Mm-hmm.
PH: —or prairie ground, or whatever they call it now.
GC: And we need a choufleur.
PH: You lack a choufleur in Baccarat. [pause for five seconds] And you have the green in Saint-Louis. Do you have a pink Saint-Louis carpet? Let me look. [sound as of tape recorder button being pressed] —probably pick up a Sant- Louis pink carpet ground for, oh, I don’t know, in the neighborhood of 2,000, 2,500, somewhere in there. And you really ought to have that because it’s a common enough weight. As I say, George Ingham has a beauty, if you could get that out of him. Or if Anna [unknown name, but probably George’s wife or daughter] would give it to you when he dies. It’s a real beauty. It’s the best one I’ve ever seen. It’s all even, which so many of them aren’t. But that would be good. And it’s a nice big one, too. Many of them are cut down. You have to be very careful not to get one that’s pink that’s cut down. But you do need that. [sound as of tape recorder button being pressed] Number 31, snake with carrot. Oh, that’s that snake with the red tongue coming out of its mouth.
GC: Mm-hmm. And actually—
PH: I think that’s silly. I mean, I just don’t think that—if you find one, you find one. But I don’t think it’s a thing to look for. You’ve got a number of snake weights and you were looking for the green coiled latticino filigree—
GC: Mm-hmm.
PH: —coiled one. And I’d settle—
GC: That would be a more beautiful one.
PH: I’d settle for that. I think the fact that it has a carrot coming out of its mouth, which is probably meant to be a fang, isn’t significant. I’d just forget that. I’d cross that right out.
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