Donavon Boutz discusses Paul Stankard’s paperweight-making techniques. Oral history interview with Donavon Boutz by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 23, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 01:54.

Donavon Boutz: You see those little torches are satisfactory for making what’s called the setup of a floral paperweight. That’s where you make the little flowers in the—or the little bugs and all of those kinds of things, but then you have to move over to a bigger torch. Now the torch that I am working at is I believe actually Paul’s personal torch that he brought—and it can be fine-tuned from that very little flame up to a very large flame. Are you familiar with the way of making the paperweights that Paul makes and other floral makers make? You purchase what are called hockey pucks, and they’re the crystal cases. And so you get those on a punty, and you have your little setup that you’re going to put in the middle of the paperweight, and you get those molten hot, and there’s a little mold that you put over those that allows you to suck all of the air out of that mold. So you bring the two pieces together, suck all the air out and it’s what gives you that clean, very crisp no, air bubbles—takes a lot of skill to learn to do that really well because if you smear one hockey puck at all, it’s completely overwhelmed your little setup and it’s all smeared on the inside of the paperweight and you know quite frankly that’s what makes Paul’s work so unbelievable, is that he—and he may have failures, all of us do, but he is just absolutely superb.