Debbie Tarsitano discusses her involvement in Paperweight Weekend and its history, being a woman glassmaker, and how she and her father learned to make paperweights. Oral history interview with Debbie Tarsitano by Barb Elam, conducted via telephone, April 18, 2019, Bard Graduate Center. Clip length: 06:15.

Time stamp: 00:00
Clip 1: Debbie Tarsitano discusses the history of Wheaton’s Paperweight Weekend. Clip length: 01:59.

Debbie Tarsitano: This is not the first one that I attended. Wheaton Village would have it one year, and then the opposite year would be the Paperweight Collectors Association convention. And I started to go to this event from Wheaton Village, it started as the—and I could be wrong—but this is what I recall. It started as the American Paperweight Association. And they had it first I believe in a hotel around the Pennsylvania–New Jersey area. And then from that it grew into the Wheaton Village Paperweight Weekend. And I think they kind of dropped the idea of the American Paperweight Association because the Paperweight Collectors Association was everyone. It was people from the United States. It was our foreign colleagues in France and all over Europe that made paperweights. You know, encompassed everything. And then from that grew this idea, well, what about American paperweight artists and having their own association, and that, like I say, took place in the late seventies probably. And then from that Gay Taylor and the people at Wheaton Village made it into the Wheaton Paperweight Weekend. And at first it had as you can see all these American artists, but at some point it really just did open up to everybody. It did. They couldn’t just like, keep it just for the American artists. There were people from Scotland, Perthshire paperweights, Saint-Louis, the people from Saint-Louis and Baccarat and other European factories. But it was kind of like the early days of putting together, you know, associations that could gather people together that enjoyed paperweights and have the artists come, which is, I feel, a great—one of the great things that these associations did. They had the artists attend. So people could actually meet the people that made the work.

Time stamp: 02:02
Clip 2:  Debbie Tarsitano discusses attending the Paperweight Collectors Association conventions with her father, Delmo. Clip length: 02:10.

Debbie Tarsitano: When I first started, I didn’t know anybody. And my dad attended a paperweight convention in Washington, D.C., and the date on that I’m not sure, but it was probably sometime in the late seventies. And when he went to the Paperweight Collectors convention in Washington, D.C. he heard about that there were these conventions and things, and gatherings. And he didn’t even sign in. He just went, he and my mom went. They didn’t know he had to like, sign in, and pay. And Mr. Paul Jokelson, when he met my father, he realized he was kind of a stowaway at the convention, and he invited him to stay. And that’s where my dad met a lot of people from paperweights and realized that there was this big group of people, and, you know, we should meet them and get to know them. And from that we began to get to know some of the people that made paperweights. There was a New England—we heard of a New England paperweight chapter, even though we lived in Long Island, and we decided, well, let’s go there. We took our little paperweights that we had just been making, and we brought them there. And we met everyone there, and saw that there was a big group of people that got together. They hadn’t had I don’t believe, like a New York chapter at the time. And that was the closest to us, even though it was a long, it’s a long ride from Long Island, we went. And so that’s when we met more people that collected paperweights and some of the dealers and things, too. So we became aware that there was this whole group of people interested. And then we started going to the auctions at Sotheby’s and Christie’s that had paperweights. They had—they actually had paperweight auctions. They were pretty extensive. I mean, they had their own catalog, which doesn’t exist today. And we started going to those auctions and then meeting also a lot of people there. but also L.H. Selman was very influential to us because my dad met him early on and was buying antique paperweights from him as a collector. And that’s how we also learned about the whole connection to these dealers that dealt in paperweights.

Time stamp: 04:14
Clip 3: Debbie Tarsitano discusses being a woman paperweight maker. Clip length: 00:37.

Debbie Tarsitano: That’s why I wanted to be better. Cause they were making really great work, and I know—now I realize maybe women would think because you’re a woman, you have to do better. But at the time I just wanted to be better, and kind of make something extraordinary that competes, and it was very competitive. I mean, we were really competing against each other. It wasn’t like, ‘I made something. Isn’t that nice?’ It’s like, ‘Well, you made something, now I’m gonna make this.’ And then they made something and said, ‘Oh, you made that. I’m gonna make this now.’ So it was fun, and it was very, very inspiring. It was a great time. Really a great time.

Time stamp: 04:50
Clip 4: Debbie Tarsitano discusses how she and her father, Delmo, learned paperweight making. Clip length: 01:24.

Debbie Tarsitano: Well, we studied the antique paperweights. We studied—got Paul Hollister’s book—I mean, and Mr. [Paul] Jokelson’s book. And then we were able to go to the auctions and handle paperweights, actually hold them in your hand and look at them. And we were fascinated to look at how they were made. We would look at them, and ‘How do you think they did that?’ And my father, until what, I think in about way in the seventies before we made paperweights, he took a glassblowing class, down in Queens [New York]. It was Milropa Studios. And he had a store—my father had an appliance store, and this glassblowing studio opened up, and he took a glassblowing class there. So he learned a little bit about hot glass. And I didn’t take the class, but I went with him. And then we met this young man at a fair that made those fun glass animals and things. And my father actually took a couple classes with him and made little bears and swans and things like that. And then he came home, and he said he wanted to make a torch in our—we have a little kind of outbuilding on our property. And so he put a little torch on a card table out there, and I started to play. He would learn how to make these little elephants and things and then—they were tiny, like one inch—and then I would play, too. And I could do it. I mean, he would show me, and then I would do it.