Housekeeping

Credits

Who took the photographs, where they came from, and what their licences say. A collecting site that asks readers to care about provenance should be able to show its own.

Last updated: 10 September 2026

Almost every photograph on this site was taken by someone else. This page records who, where the picture came from, and what its licence says, for every image currently published here.

Nothing on this page is an obligation I am discharging grudgingly. Most of these photographs are public domain or CC0 and require no credit at all. They are listed anyway, because a collecting site that asks its readers to care about provenance should be able to show its own. Each article also carries its own credits at the foot of the page; this is the same information gathered in one place.

If you are the creator of something here and I have got the attribution wrong, or you would rather it were not used, please tell me and I will correct or remove it.

A tiny universe inside glass

  • Millefiori paperweight, three-quarter view. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, object BK-1977-83, via Wikimedia Commons. CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication.
  • Blue close-packed millefiori paperweight. Photograph by Tangopaso, own work, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

How to identify a glass paperweight

  • Amber glass paperweight with controlled bubbles. Photograph by Albertyanks (Albert Jankowski), own work, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Understanding millefiori

  • Red close-packed millefiori paperweight. Photograph by Tangopaso, own work, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

What makes a paperweight valuable

  • A collection of glass paperweights. Photograph by DonSiano, own work, 2008, via Wikimedia Commons. Released into the public domain by the photographer.

Reading the base: pontils, polish, and stars

  • Millefiori paperweight, maker unknown, probably late 1800s. Photograph by Daderot, own work, 2020, via Wikimedia Commons. CC0 / Public Domain Mark.
  • Pontil scar on the base of a free-blown glass bowl. Photograph by Douglas W. Jones, 2009, own work, via Wikimedia Commons. Released into the public domain by the author.
  • Four pontil finishes. Original diagram drawn for this site. It embeds a subset of Instrument Sans, used under the SIL Open Font License.

How to start collecting glass paperweights

  • Millefiori canes. Photograph by Diana (didsss) on Pexels. Pexels licence; attribution not required.
  • Antique Baccarat close-pack millefiori paperweight. Photograph by Lesbeatiques, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.
  • Ken Rosenfeld lampwork orb paperweight. Photograph by Lesbeatiques, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.
  • Glass paperweight with a sulphide bust of Queen Victoria, Baccarat, c. 1850, Corning Museum of Glass. Photograph by Andre Carrotflower, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0.
  • Base of a paperweight by Tony Kuepfer, 1980. Auckland War Memorial Museum Tamaki Paenga Hira, via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 4.0, attribution required as “Auckland Museum”.
  • Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York. Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith, Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain, no known copyright restrictions.
  • Blue flower paperweight, Baccarat, France, c. 1850, Currier Museum of Art. Photograph via Wikimedia Commons. CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication.
  • Keeping records. Original diagram drawn for this site.

How to start collecting glass objects

Every photograph in this article is CC0 or public domain, so none of them required permission or credit. They are recorded here all the same.

  • Pezzato vase, Fulvio Bianconi for Venini, 1950–51, V&A. Photograph by 14GTR, own work, via Wikimedia Commons. CC0 1.0.
  • Saturneo and Parabolici vases, Ercole Barovier, 1951, V&A. Photograph by 14GTR, own work, via Wikimedia Commons. CC0 1.0.
  • Festivo candlesticks, Timo Sarpaneva for Iittala. Photograph by Otto-Ville Mikkelä, own work, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
  • Cameo glass vase, Émile Gallé, c. 1900, Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt. Photograph by Daderot, own work, via Wikimedia Commons. CC0 1.0.
  • Millefiori paperweight, Gillinder & Sons. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access, via Wikimedia Commons. CC0 1.0.
  • Filigrana a reticello, detail, Murano Glass Museum. Photograph by Vassil, own work, via Wikimedia Commons. CC0 1.0.
  • What a glass description actually claims. Original diagram drawn for this site.

A note of honesty about the two V&A photographs: the photographs are released CC0 by the photographer, and the uploader treats the mid-century objects themselves as utilitarian and so not subject to copyright. That is the uploader’s reasoning rather than a settled point in every country.

Elsewhere on the site

  • Home page header photograph, a group of paperweights. By JamesDeMers on Pixabay. Pixabay content licence; attribution not required.
  • The portrait in the footer, and the wordmark and logo, are my own.

Type and tools

  • Headings are set in Instrument Serif and everything else in Instrument Sans, both by Instrument and both released under the SIL Open Font License.
  • The site runs on WordPress with the Blocksy theme and Elementor, and is hosted by Hostinger.
  • No analytics, no advertising and no tracking, as described in the privacy policy.

How images are chosen

Two rules, learned the hard way. Every photograph is checked against its original source page before it is published, because a plausible filename is not evidence: stock libraries have handed me Turkish ceramics captioned as paperweights and painted spheres captioned as sulphides. And where an object can be shown honestly or not at all, it goes unillustrated, or gets a drawn diagram instead of a staged photograph that would only pretend.