Image courtesy of Gordon Smith.

Gordon Smith

Paperweight artist Gordon Smith (1959– ) began experimenting with hot glass on his own while a high school student in New Jersey. He studied scientific glassblowing at Salem Community College from 1977 to 1978 and made laboratory instruments for three years before becoming interested in flamework paperweights, introduced to him by James and Nontas Kontes, owners of the scientific glass company where he then worked. Smith taught himself flameworking and learned other traditional hot-glass techniques while volunteering at Wheaton Village (later Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center) in Millville, New Jersey. Now based in Arizona, Smith has been running an independent glass studio since 1982 and is regarded as one of the leading modern-day makers of flamework paperweights.

Works

Succulent Plants, 2019. Image courtesy of Gordon Smith.

White Diamond Strawberries, 2018. Image courtesy of Gordon Smith.

Snake Design, 2018. Image courtesy of Gordon Smith.

Gordon Smith discusses Paul Stankard and talks about paperweights becoming fine art objects.

 

Playing01:23 Transcript
Gordon Smith

Gordon Smith discusses Paul Stankard and talks about paperweights becoming fine art objects. Oral history interview with Gordon Smith by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, November 26, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:23.

Gordon Smith: I think the level of the work, it—I think to say that I’m a—there’s something about—and it’s, it’s kind of bothered me for a number of years, and it actually—this conversation’s come up recently, even among collectors. You know, we’re having a hard time with this word paperweight—because they’re really fine art objects and they’ve evolved from the sixties and the seventies from being a very craft-type object to a fine art object. And really, in the early 1980s, that distinction was made—I don’t know by who and where, but it was in reference to the work Paul Stankard was doing because it was so refined and it was such a step above what you see in craft stores and being done by kind of the weekend warriors that have a hot tank of glass making tank paperweights and selling them at craft fairs and craft shows. These were fine art objects. And then a few of us came along right after that and brought the level of the work itself to such a high level that that’s what defined it as being fine art versus a craft.

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Gordon Smith speaks about discovering paperweights through the Kontes Brothers and being part of a tiny population of makers

Playing01:39 Transcript
Gordon Smith

Gordon Smith speaks about discovering paperweights through the Kontes Brothers and being part of a tiny population of makers. Oral history interview with Gordon Smith by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, November 26, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:39.

Time stamp: 00:00
Clip 1: Gordon Smith relays how he discovered paperweights. Clip length: 01:11.

Gordon Smith: Well, I started being formally trained as a scientific glassblower as many of the other—you know, Paul Stankard was, I think Rick Ayotte did it as well. Charlie [Charles] Kaziun did that. There were a number of us that that was our background, our formal training. And from doing that, I found myself working at the Kontes Glass Company in Vineland in 1980. And I had no idea that the Kontes Brothers, Jim and Nontas Kontes, two of the three brothers that own the business, I had no idea that they were paperweight makers. It was something they did as a hobby. But I saw one of their paperweights one day while working there as a laboratory glassblower, and it just kind of—I had this moment where I just went, ‘Holy smokes. What the heck is this?’ You know, I had never seen anything like it, it just became—and from that moment on, I became obsessed with wanting to learn about it. And just learn more and more. And that’s how it started. 

Time stamp: 01:13
Clip 2: Gordon Smith talks about how small the paperweight maker community was when he started. Clip length: 00:25.

Gordon Smith: First of all, when I became the newest paperweight maker in 1982, there were—including me at the time—I think I represented the eleventh or twelfth person in the world that did that. So that’s a really, really small group of people. You became among the—a very elite group if you were able to accomplish that.

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Gordon Smith speaks about live demos at Wheaton and criticism from other paperweight artists.

Playing02:48 Transcript
Gordon Smith

Gordon Smith speaks about live demonstrations at Wheaton and criticism from other paperweight artists. Oral history interview with Gordon Smith by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, November 26, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 02:48.

Time stamp: 00:00
Clip 1: Gordon Smith talks about the criteria for being chosen to give a demo at Wheaton. Clip length: 00:35.

Gordon Smith: They had asked me to do a demonstration in the factory. They normally do—they’ll ask any of the artists that might—you know, just to see if any have an interest leading up to those conventions. For instance, I already know now that I’m giving a demonstration at the next one. So they usually plan out about a year in advance and they ask a few artists, ‘Are you interested in giving a talk or giving a live demonstration?’ And they approached me. And Johne [Parsley] and I had been doing things together, so they thought we could come up with something interesting to do.

Time stamp: 00:37
Clip 2: Gordon Smith explains that the Paperweight Weekend demos are open to the public. Clip length: 00:48.

Gordon Smith: I can tell you that every convention at Wheaton Village is not only paperweight collectors and dealers that fly in for the weekend from all over the world, but also, since Wheaton Village is a facility that’s open to the public, when those live demonstrations are going on in the factory, the public is also welcome to come in and look at them going on, since that’s just a daily happening at the village, it’s pretty much every day of the year. So they get the benefit, just by chance, if they happen to come through Wheaton Village on the weekend of a convention, whether they know it or not, they get the benefit of seeing some of the top paperweight makers in the world doing demonstrations and showing techniques and what we do.

Time stamp: 01:28
Clip 3: Gordon Smith discusses public perceptions of paperweight demos. Clip length: 00:42.

Gordon Smith: To be honest, anybody that was just a lay person coming through there, I don’t think they had any idea at the value of what they were seeing being done. Not only the rarity of the fact that pretty much every top flamework paperweight maker in the country, and in some cases the world—cause even at some of those conventions, some of the makers from Europe would fly over as well. But I don’t think the lay person had any idea that they were seeing such a rare group of people doing such a rare art form, and showing such rare techniques. I don’t think they had any idea.

Time stamp: 02:13
Clip 4: Gordon Smith discusses being criticized by other paperweight artists for giving demonstrations early in his career. Clip length: 00:35.

Gordon Smith: I can remember taking a little bit of heat from other paperweight makers because I came in and I just was the new guy and I didn’t understand just how much these guys liked to keep a stranglehold on what we did. And I set up all my stuff to demonstrate, and some of them—I don’t think they liked it. They didn’t like seeing the fact that I was pretty much just exposing all these secrets to the public, and it bothered them. And I remember hearing it from a couple of them.

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