Paperweight collecting

. A really good print at a movie theater will be about 500:1^[1]. He has more recently moved away from the classical domed paperweight to rectangular forms which are among the finest glass objects produced in the twentieth century. A printed page is about 80:1. The work of Paul Stankard was particularly noted for its incredibly realistic portrayal of flowers, including their roots. For reference, the page you're reading now (on a computer monitor) is actually about 50:1. Today their work rivals anything produced by the great factories of the middle 1800's. To illustrate, some manufacturers will measure contrast with the front glass removed, which accounts for some of the wild claims regarding their advertised ratios.

Over the years their work improved in precision and complexity and sometimes strived for increased reality in depicting natural objects. In reality, there are no standardised tests for contrast ratio, meaning each manufacturer can publish virtually any number that they like. Then in the late 1960's and 1970's other artists such as Paul Stankard, Delmo and daughter Debbie Tarsitano, Victor Trabucco and sons, Gordon Smith, Rick Ayotte and his daughter Melissa, and the father and son team of Bob and Ray Banford, began breaking new ground. On the surface, this is a great thing. In Scotland, the pioneering work of Paul Ysart in the 1950's was very important in showing the way to a new generation of artists such as William Manson and John Deacons. Contrast ratios for plasma displays are often advertised as high as 5000:1. Charles Kazuin started in 1940 to produce buttons, paperweights, inkwells and other bottles using lamp-work of elegant simplicity. The implication is that a higher contrast ratio means more picture detail.

In the U.S. Contrast ratio indicates the difference between the brightest part of a picture and the darkest part of a picture, measured in discrete steps, at any given moment. There are today only about a couple of dozen studio artists who are producing (or have produced) fine paperweights. Plasma displays use the same phosphors as CRTs, accounting for the extremely accurate color reproduction. Notable examples include the Lundberg studio, Orient and Flume, Correia, Lotton, and Parabelle. In this way, the control system can produce colors across the entire visible spectrum. These may have several to some dozens of workers with various levels of skill cooperating to produce their own distinctive "line" of paperweights. By varying the pulses of current flowing through the different cells, the control system can increase or decrease the intensity of each subpixel color to create hundreds of different combinations of red, green and blue.

A number of small studios have appeared in the past decades, particularly in the US. These colors blend together to create the overall color of the pixel. and Great Britain and elsewhere, but they were generally of a lesser quality. One subpixel has a red light phosphor, one subpixel has a green light phosphor and one subpixel has a blue light phosphor. Weights were also produced in the U.S. Every pixel is made up of three separate subpixel cells, each with different colored phosphors. The first two are also producing them in limited quantities (100 to 300) again today. The phosphors in a plasma display give off colored light when they are excited.

Louis, and Clichy. The current creates a rapid flow of charged particles, which stimulates the gas atoms to release ultraviolet photons. The antiques were produced mostly in three factories in France: Baccarat, St. When the intersecting electrodes are charged (with a voltage difference between them), an electric current flows through the gas in the cell. There are two eras in which paperweights were produced: the "classical" period, 1845 to 1860, and the modern period, from about 1950 to the present day. To ionize the gas in a color panel, the plasma display's computer charges the electrodes that intersect at that cell thousands of times in a small fraction of a second, charging each cell in turn. In a modern piece, an identifying mark and date are imperative. A small amount of nitrogen is added to the neon to increase hysteresis.

Everything in it was intentionally put there by the artist. This type of panel has inherent memory and does not use phosphors. Generally, there are no "happy accidents" in a good paperweight. To erase a cell all voltage is removed from a pair of electrodes. Unintenional asymmetries and unevenly spaced or broken elements must be absent. The ionizing state can be maintained by applying a low-level voltage between all the horizontal and vertical electrodes - even after the ionizing voltage is removed. Glass with a yellow or greenish cast is not found in good collections. In a monochrome plasma panel, control circuitry charges the electrodes that cross paths at a cell, causing the plasma to ionize and emit photons between the electrodes.

Visible flaws, such as bubbles, striations and scratches usually affects the value quite a lot. The transparent display electrodes, which are surrounded by an insulating dielectric material and covered by a magnesium oxide protective layer, are mounted above the cell, along the front glass plate. As in any fine work of art, the factors influencing the value of a paperweight are workmanship, design, rarity and condition. The address electrodes sit behind the cells, along the rear glass plate. The ground on which the inner parts rest may be clear, colored or have a granular ground made of unfused sand, or resemble lace (latticinio). Long electrodes are also sandwiched between the glass plates, on both sides of the cells. It may be coated with one or more thin layers of glass and then have windows cut through it to reveal the interior motif. The xenon and neon gas in a plasma television is contained in hundreds of thousands of tiny cells positioned between two plates of glass.

The dome or the base may be faceted or etched. Some 42" sets fell below $1,500 at major retailers like Best Buy and Costco during the 2005 Christmas season, and many of the retailers reported that plasma TVs were among the hottest selling items for that season. Various other embelishments may be done to enhance the beauty of the paperweight. But as prices fall and technology advances, they have started to seriously compete against the CRT sets. There are several different types of paperweights, and collectors often specialize in just one of them. With prices starting around US$2,000 and going all the way up past US$20,000 (as of 2004), these sets did not sell as quickly as older technologies like CRT. There are something like 20,000 paperweight collectors worldwide. Also, most cheaper consumer displays appear to have an insufficient color depth - a moving dithering pattern may be easily noticible for a discerning viewer over flat areas or smooth gradients; expensive high-res panels are much better at managing the problem.

There are a number of paperweight collectors associations, which hold national and regional conventions and other activities such as tours, lectures, and auctions. The biggest drawbacks of plasma technology are the high cost, often lower resolution, and relatively short lifespan. Collecting modern weights for investment purposes, though possible, is for optimists. Because many plasma displays still have a lower resolution the image quality is often not quite up to the standards of good LCD displays or cathode ray tube sets, but it certainly meets most people's expectations. Antique weights, of which perhaps 10,000 or so survive (mostly in museums), generally appreciate steadily in value. Since each pixel is lit individually, the image is very bright and looks good from almost every angle. An advantage of paperweight collecting, as opposed to many other collectables such as oil paintings and toys, is that they require no special conditions of temperature and humidity for their preservation. The main advantage of plasma display technology is that a very wide screen can be produced using extremely thin materials.

The dividing line between these classes, of course, is up to the individual collector. Competing displays include the Cathode ray tube, OLED, AMLCD, DLP, SED-tv and field emission flat panel displays. Both may produce inexpensive "gift" weights as well as the more expensive "collector" weights. So if you use it at an average of 2-1/2 hours a day, the PDP will last approximately 65 years. Paperweights are made in factories where many artists and technicians collaborate, as well as in studios occupied by sole artisans. Half life is the point where the picture has degraded to half of its original brightness, which is considered the end of the functional life of the display. They rarely hold down any paper--they are rather magnificent examples of fine workmanship of the glass artisan at his best, and are appreciated for their esthetic as opposed to their utilitarian aspect. The lifetime of the latest generation of PDPs is estimated at 60,000 hours to half life when displaying video.

"Paperweight" is something of a misnomer. Nominal measuments indicate 150 Watts for a 50" screen. . Real life measurements of plasma power consumption find it to be much less than that normally quoted by manufacturers. Thus paperweight collecting is a hobby accessible to those with limited means, as well as those having a passion for rarity in addition to beauty. Plasma displays use as much power per square meter as a CRT or an AMLCD television; in 2004 the cost has come down to US$1900 or less for the popular 42 inch (107 cm) diagonal size, making it very attractive for home-theatre use. They range in value anywhere from a few dollars to a record of $258,500 once paid for an antique French weight. The display panel is only 6 cm (2 1/2 inches) thick, while the total thickness, including electronics, is less than 10 cm (4 inches).

something like a lens to magnify and make the parts within move in an interesting and attractive way as it is handled. They have a very high "dark-room" contrast, creating the "perfect black" desirable for watching movies. Paperweights made for the collector are of solid glass, generally having a flat base and a domed top, which acts. Plasma displays are bright (1000 lx or higher for the module), have a wide color gamut, and can be produced in fairly large sizes, up to 200 cm (80 inches) diagonally. Jargstorf, Sibylle (1997) Paperweights ISBN 0887403751. Today the superior brightness and viewing angle, when compared to LCD, of color plasma panels have caused these displays to become one of the most popular form of HDTV. (1992) All About Paperweights ISBN 0933756178. In 1997 Pioneer started selling the first Plasma TV to the public.

Selman, Lawrence H. It was a hybrid based on the plasma display created at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and NHK STRL, achieving superior brightness. Reilly, Pat, (1994) Paperweights: The Collector's Guide to Identifying, Selecting, and Enjoying New and Vintage Paperweights ISBN 156138433X. In 1992, Fujitsu introduced the world's first 21-inch full color display. The Paperweight Mall. Nonetheless, plasma's relatively large screen size and thin profile made the displays attractive for high-profile placement such as lobbies and stock exchanges. International Paperweight Society. There followed a long period of sales decline in the late 1970s as semiconductor memory made CRT displays incredibly cheap.

The Paperweight Collectors Association, Inc. The original monochrome (usually orange or green) panels enjoyed a surge of popularity in the early 1970s because the displays were rugged and needed neither memory nor refresh circuitry. Bill Price-collector/author (victorian advertising and portrait paperweights). Gene Slottow in 1964 for the PLATO Computer System. Victor Trabucco. Bitzer and H. Bob and Ray Banford. The Plasma display panel was invented at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign by Donald L.

Rick Ayotte. . Debbie Tarsitano. This gas mixture is inert and entirely harmless. Paul Stankard. The gas discharge contains no mercury (contrary to the backlights of an AMLCD); a mixture of noble gases (neon and xenon) is used instead. Abrams. A plasma display is an emissive flat panel display where light is created by phosphors excited by a plasma discharge between two flat panels of glass.

N. Graeser, and J. Later makers included Albert A. For examples, refer to PCA's Annual Bulletins published for 2000, 2001 and 2002.

This same process was also used to produce paperweights with the owner's name encased or an advertisment of a business or product. The portrait paperweights contained pictures of ordinary people reproduced on a milkglass disk and encased within clear glass. Maxwell. Victorian portrait and advertising paperweights were dome glass paperweights first made in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania using a process patented in 1882 by William H.

They may also be sprayed while hot with various metallic salts to achieve an irridescent look. California style paperweights are made by "painting" the surface of the dome with colored molten glass, and manipulated with picks or other tools. swirl paperweights have opaque rods of two or three colors radiating like a pinwheel fom a central millefiori floret. They often are produced to commemorate some person or event.

sulfide paperweights have an encased three dimensional medalion or portrait plaque made from a ceramic. This is a form particularly favored by studio artists. lampwork paperweights have objects such as flowers, fruit, butterflies or animals constructed by shaping and working bits of colored glass with a gas burner or torch and assembling them into attractive compositions, which are then incorporated into the dome. The exist in many variations such as scattered, patterned, close concentric or carpet ground.

These are usually made in a factory setting. millefiori paperweights contain thin cross-sections of cylindrical composite canes made from colored rods and resemble little flowers.