Art frozen in glass: Exquisite paperweights

paperweight-paul-stankard-flowers-and-fruit-bouquet-with-swarming-honeybees-ron-farina.jpg — Ron Farina

"Flowers and Fruit Bouquet with Swarming Honeybees" (2014) by Paul Stankard.

Writer Truman Capote, a collector, said a paperweight is like "some fragment of a dream."

Think of a good paperweight the way you'd think of a violin virtuoso's star-turn - as the total mastery of technique shown off in a dazzling display. How DO those flowers get inside? And what about the bees?

Artisan

New Jersey artist Paul Stankard is among the most important makers of paperweights today.

Floral

Each of Stankard's designs is its own mesmerizing universe - poetry suspended in crystal, the way he sees it, with a price tag as high as $75,000.

Cube

Stankard, a master of the form, told CBS News' Martha Teichner that he creates a personal response to nature in glass.

"I grew up in eastern Massachusetts -- pastures, dairy farms, woods, endless woods -- and early on when I started making paperweights, I started thinking about my childhood memories."

The '70s

Stankard said at the time when he began making paperweights, in the world of art such objects were viewed as kitsch. But kitsch was not what Stankard had in mind; no ticky-tacky knick knacks.

"I'm competing with the past," he told Teichner. "I can remember going to the Corning Glass Museum, looking at their collection of antique French paperweights, and somehow realizing that if I'm going to be successful in my field, I better do better than the best of the antique French, because they didn't have technology on their side."

French Beauty

Arthur Rubloff Collection of Paperweights at the Art Institute of Chicago

In the mid-19th century, paperweights made in France - which became popular around the world - were small treasures which combined all kinds of age-old glassmaking techniques, some dating back to ancient Roman times.

Christopher Monkhouse, chief curator for European decorative arts at the Art Institute of Chicago - home to one of the world's great collections of paperweights - says the public always fills his gallery. "They look at these little miniature marvels of technique, and they're just tours de force."

Left: A paperweight, c. 1848-55, from the Clichy Glasshouse of Paris.

Suspended

Stankard said past artisans were very secretive about how to create paperweights, so he taught himself the craft through trial and error.

By manipulating temperature and timing, Stankard figured out how to take a gob of glass heated to 1000 degrees Fahrenheit and attach it to his cluster of little treasures without melting them.

Torch

Stankard uses a torch to create the tiny objects that go inside one of his paperweights.

Bee

They may look real, but every detail within the paperweight is made of glass. Stankard fashions tiny strands of colored glass - some as fine as hair - to create the objects that will be suspended within.

Paul Stankard

Crafting the interior.

Blowtorch

A heated moment.

The Furnace

Out of his furnace comes a true make-or-break moment - a paperweight at last, it goes into an oven to rest.

Botanical Series

"Golden Orb Floral Triptych" (2009) by Paul Stankard. 5 3/8 inches high x 7 3/4 inches wide x 4 inches deep. Flameworked colored glass encapsulated in clear glass, cold-worked and laminated.

A Thing of Beauty

Stankard told Teichner, even after 40 years of making paperweights, he gets excited every time - especially when the day is over, "and I have something beautiful in the oven!" he laughed.