Paul Stankard

Paul Stankard, a founder of the Studio Glass movement, is considered a pioneer in staking a claim for paperweights as art objects. For more than five decades, Stankard has pushed the boundaries of glass to create dazzling capsules whose suspended botanical subjects pay homage to the beauty of the natural world. His paperweight sculptures have received multiple awards including the James Renwick Alliance’s Masters of the Medium Award and the Glass Art Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Stankard, a fellow of the American Craft Council, has also been honored with several major solo exhibitions, including a 2000 show at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and a 2004 retrospective at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. In his practice, which dates to 1969, he has experimented endlessly with the traditional paperweight form, with each piece suggesting a unique microcosm. His convincingly lifelike botanical art is included in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musée du Louvre, and The Corning Museum of Glass.