Art in a bubble

I grew up in a house that had a formal living room.  It was the kind of room that you only went in on holidays.  Everything was off limits.  My mother had a lot of collections; Herends, cut crystal, sterling frames, and lots of worldly things that used to belong to my great-grandmother.  They were placed in nice vignettes around the room, but the showstopper of the space was her paperweight collection. 

The collection sat dead center in the middle of the room on a beautiful Asian-inspired, brass and glass coffee table.  There must have been at least fifty pieces perfectly placed over the entire area of the table.  I used to worry that the weight of them would eventually break through the glass (and it didn't help that I was a pudgy preteen practicing cartwheels in the next room).  Sometimes at night, I would sneak into the living room and pick them up one at a time.  Each one was remarkably different and each one of them told a different story inside their own little bubble.  I always said that I wouldn't be a collector, but last week I bought my first one...

























goldstein paperweights