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Chinese Glass History


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I've been doing some internet sleuthing today about my growing Chinese paperweight collection (maybe I've fallen down a rabbit hole 😆), and thought i'd share this even thought its only kind of marble related. I think it might be of interest to anybody who has any really old, handmade marbles from China i.e transitionals and millefiori marbles. 

 

Apparently, there's this big huge glass museum in Boshan, China (now called Zibo). Among other things, the museum, called the "Boshan Colored Glaze Museum", has a boatload of very old glass artifacts from China (including a ton of paperweights that look exactly like the ones in American antique stores). On the museum website, it says that Boshan has been producing colored glass crafts since the Yuan dynasty (1300s). Apparently, "colored glaze flower balls" were produced since the Ming dynasty (1368 to 1644). "Colored glaze flower balls" are what the website refers to as a paperweight. (Glass is called glaze for some reason). 

 

I think this information is pretty incredible since it corroborates what Robert Block found, that Chinese marbles could have been produced in Shandong. I feel like this would make sense (at least with the millefiori and painted sulphide marbles) since they are the exact same glass as the Boshan paperweights. 

 

Also, the website said that until very modern times, Boshan was really the only town in China producing colored glass (because of acess to a bunch of minerals for glassmaking). 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

You're more than welcome! 🙂 I love sharing all the cool things/info about those things that I find here and there. 🧐

 

I think the extra cool part about the paperweights is that all of us have some or have probably seen them at least. Little did we know that they came from such a small area in the middle of China. 

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16 hours ago, YasudaCollector said:

I love the rich blue in it

Lets get this right--no one here will be bored looking at glass--in any form.

There may be a few marble "purists" in the world but we all have collected other things imho.

Thanks for sharing one of your passions--luv it!

Marble--On!!

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