Y'all Come Sit a Spell

brought home another piece of glass.

I know. Shocking.

This one is a St. Clair paperweight I’ve named Magnum. She is a substantial little world of cobalt-blue flowers arranged around a white center, with clear bubbles caught among the petals. You can look through the side and see flowers overlapping one another. Look down from above and the arrangement changes again.

That is the trouble with paperweights. Someone can call them decorative objects, and technically they’re right. But then I pick one up, turn it toward the light, and lose fifteen minutes of my life looking at a place no bigger than my palm.

Magnum is especially good at this.

In ordinary light, the blue flowers are bold and the white center seems quiet. Put a light beneath her and quiet goes right out the window. The white flares. The blue glows. Suddenly I can see depth where, a moment earlier, I thought I had seen the whole thing.

I haven’t. I probably never will.

Her base bears a St. Clair mark. The St. Clair family’s history stretches through generations of glassmaking in Elwood, Indiana, and flowers in glass became one of their traditions. I love knowing that. I also love that I felt pulled toward Magnum before I had the family history sorted out. Sometimes my eye gets there first and the research catches up later.

I have learned to listen when a piece makes me stop.

I’ll take pictures of it. I’ll turn it over, look for a mark, hold it up to a window, and try to decide whether I’m admiring it or taking it home. These are separate activities in theory. In practice, there is a point where I’ve taken seven pictures and given the thing a name, and we all know how this is going to end.

Magnum came home.

Now she gets to sit where I can change the light and look at her again. That isn’t an inspection. It’s the pleasure of finding that she still has something to show me.

Maybe that’s why I collect glass. I like beautiful things, obviously, but I particularly like beautiful things that reward attention. Something made by a person’s hands has survived long enough to land in mine. I get to notice the colors they put together, the small details I missed yesterday, and the way light can make an old object feel entirely new.

Magnum has five blue flowers and one very persuasive white center. She has a family name pressed into her base and more than one good side. She also has the considerable advantage of living with someone who will happily spend an afternoon photographing her from all of them.

Welcome home, Magnum. Try not to encourage the others.