President Vice President TOBY HAWLEY JIM LEFEVER
[email protected] [email protected] 5 Johnson Lane 810 Mt. Joy Road Voorhees, NJ 08043 Manheim, PA 17545 (856) 751-7720 (717) 665-4881 Secretary Treasurer, Newsletter Editor JILL BAUERSFELD DON FORMIGLI
[email protected] [email protected] 9 Ramblewood Drive 455 Stonybrook Drive White Haven, PA 18661 Levittown, PA 19055 (570) 443-7023 (215) 945-1243 Volume 21 • Number 4 www.dvpaperweights.org October 2014 Revisiting Charles Kaziun Jr. That arrangement in button-making, he once observed, led to his career in paperweights. It was by experimenting within by Ben Drabeck these tiny forms that he mastered techniques which he later used in creating his paperweights. (He often said that buttons Charles Kaziun Jr. was, without any doubt, an authentic were paperweights in every way except in size.) So in the genius. Single handedly and without any kind of instruction button format, he made the rope roses in a wide range of or support, he brought the long dormant art of the “classical” colors. Then came buttons which contained crimp roses, lilies paperweight back to full and vibrant life. and other lampworked flowers, silhouettes, millefiori, and foil After a period of paperweight brilliance that spanned the enclosures. Some buttons were overlays (single and double) middle and later years of the 19th century, paperweight and some were faceted. Some buttons also became jewelry: production declined to near zero and then stopped altogether. earrings, cufflinks, tie tacs, and pins, for which Charlie did all Except for a brief resurgence by the Baccarat company his own settings, which produced the so-called Dupont weights in the 1920’s, As long as he worked at the University making instruments ”classical” paperweight production in both Europe and in this and otherwise demonstrating his vast skill in creating scientific country had nearly disappeared.