sonora2sonoma

Ever wonder why we have paperweights? I’ve been aware of the existence of paperweights since childhood; I even own a couple of them. The very term ‘paperweight’ explains itself quite handily, when you think about it. Except, if you think about it, why would we have need of paperweights today?

Never before this morning have I questioned the need for paperweights, until now, while I was listening to my wife tell me about a cool-sounding glass paperweight she has at her office featuring a miniature scene of the city of St Louis, complete with hot-air balloons engraved inside, I found myself blurting out “why do we need paperweights, anyway?” She shot back, “maybe to keep things from blowing away?”

Reasoning that office desks are customarily located inside buildings, and noting aloud that wind is not often encountered in such places, my response was,” well, it’s not likely to be windy inside.”

Michelle proposed, while opening a web browser page on her computer, “let’s look it up.”

The answer she found didn’t surprise us, yet it caused us both to laugh. The read-out, likely an artifact from a former time when people were less insulated from the elements and had to depend on unique responses to solve specific problems, read:

“A paperweight is a small solid object heavy enough (usually a glass marble), when placed on top of papers, to keep them from blowing away in a breeze or from moving under the strokes of a painting brush (as with Japanese calligraphy).”

Now you know!

Tim Konrad