Paul J. Stankard: Homage to Nature

by Ulysses Grant Dietz, John Bigelow Taylor (Photographer)

Since childhood, nature has always been important to Paul Stankard, and now as the world's leading glass paperweight artist, this interest has become the defining signature of his work. Flowers such as roses, lilacs, and orchids are depicted as are a host of fantasy flowers that the artist creates in his studio, located in southern New Jersey. To look at a Stankard paperweight is to be momentarily fooled into believing that the artist has preserved a living flower in glass, when, in fact, he has created one entirely from spun filaments.
Words, too, play a role, again reinforcing natural processes. Here the artist creates mosaic word canes, spelling out words like seed, wet, and scent, to name a few, which he then embeds in his floral creations. A more complex application of Stankard's paperweight skill is the formation of what the artist calls botanicals, which are upright cloistered glass objects, sometimes in diptych and triptych formations.
In Paul Homage to Nature, decorative arts curator Ulysses Grant Dietz writes with ease and affection about this gregarious, immensely talented artist.
More than 180 photographs by fine arts photographer John Bigelow Taylor display close to 200 paperweights and botanicals made by Paul Stankard. Also included are photographs showing the actual preparation and assembly of the flowers, root people, and insects encased in glass. No other glass art book has ever shown a glass artist's process of creation as it is depicted here.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1996

About the author

Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave it to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia is his second novel.

Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 40 years and their two almost-grown children.

By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.