This two-piece paperweight in vivid blue glass was made by Mantorp Glasbruk, a small glassworks in Östergötland, Sweden, and still carries its original "Mantorp Sweden" paper label. The label and the style point to around the 1970s, the first decade of the works, which opened in 1969.
Mantorp is a hand-blowing hut rather than a large factory. Its glassblowers became known for paperweights, animal figures and small decorative pieces, most of them sold without the name of an individual designer. This piece belongs to that anonymous, workshop-made side of Swedish glass.
The paperweight is built from two solid parts. The heavy, low base has a shallow recess at the top, edged with fine radial ribs, and its underside is moulded with a grid of small pyramid-shaped studs that glow through the thick blue glass. A smooth glass disc with a domed top and a stepped edge sits into the recess, so the two parts lock together into one compact, sculptural block.
Apart from holding papers on a desk, it works as a colour accent on a shelf or windowsill, where light passing through the studded base throws blue reflections on the surface below. As a hand-finished piece, it shows the small bubbles and irregularities typical of glass shaped at the furnace.
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