Last day to place
intial bids:
April 20, 2001

Click on the image to enlarge Lot 14 Very rare Saint Louis antique pair of wafer dishes atop classic crown paperweights. Red and green twists alternate with white latticinio filigree, with matching pink and white filigree torsades on lip of dishes. Central canes in the paperweight bases are complex star canes, one in blue, green, white, and red, the other in pink, blue, white, and red. "Tazze made of various materials had been produced throughout Europe since the Renaissance, but the popularization of social letter writing in the early nineteenth century led to a new use, and increased demand, for these shallow, stemmed bowls: holding the paraphernalia of the writing desk, principally sealing wax sticks or 'wafers' (hence the alternate name for the tazza, 'wafer dish'). Warming wax wafers (or dripping wax from the warmed sticks) and impressing them with the writer's seal, which typically bore his motto or emblem, was a common way to seal letters or authenticate documents." -Objects of Fantasy: Glass Inclusions of the Nineteenth Century. Diameter 3 7/16"; Height 3 1/4". $7500-9000

Click on the image to enlarge Lot 15 Saint Louis antique crown paperweight, composed of red and green twists, alternating with white latticinio ribbons, emanating from a pink complex cane center. The complex cane has small florets and arrow canes, surrounded by a ring of hollow canes. "The crown weight is perhaps the most distinctive of all the Saint Louis designs. These weights are hollow and the decoration is of colored twisted ribbons running through and around white opaque latticinio." -A Collector's Guide to Paperweights. Diameter 2 9/16". $2750-3250