Who Are Harvey and Doris Robinson?
I
n 1968, inspired by the paperweight in the
Orson Wells 1941 film classic
“Citizen Kane,” Harvey Robinson went looking
for a snow paperweight to show
to his children, then 16, 14 and 6 years old.
As he traveled - and in those
days he did extensively - he stopped into
antique and gift shops but he
never found what he was looking for.
However, in his
quest, he found a few glass paperweights.
Intrigued, he
brought home two paperweights. One was an
inkwell, probably made in an Ohio
glass factory; the other was a Murano crown
paperweight. Then, in an effort
to find out what he had actually bought, he
went to the local Library to see
if there were any books on glass paperweights.
Books! That was one of his
best early decisions.
With a copy of
Hollister’s “Encyclopedia of Glass Paperweights”
as
reference, he was able to shop with much
greater discrimination. But in
those days good paperweights were hard to
find. During one of his visits to
a local antique shop, Harvey was referred to a
paperweight collector who
very kindly asked him to come to his home to
see his personal collection of
paperweights. That’s when his love affair with
these intriguing glass
objects really began.
In 1969, on a
vacation trip to Martha’s Vineyard with his wife,
Doris,
a chance stop at an antiques and gift shop
turned up a Perthshire
Paperweight. Harvey recognized that he had
discovered a true treasure!
Having learned in
his travels and his visits to antique shops, that
good quality paperweights were not readily
available, he decided to start
importing and selling Perthshire Paperweights
to the finest shops he could
locate. Finding an active market, he soon
expanded into buying and selling a
full line of high quality modern and antique
glass paperweights to both
shops and paperweight collectors.
It took no more than
a few years for Doris to develop an interest in
paperweights. Who could resist? She joined him
in the paperweight business
in 1973. Together they have had many
adventures: traveling to and exhibiting
at Paperweight Conventions and local
Paperweight Chapter Meetings; visiting
paperweight factories in U.K. and France;
seeking out paperweight artists;
attending auctions of paperweights in the
United States and England. An
added bonus has been the friendships that were
made over the years with a
variety of people who were associated with
paperweights.
As a team, they
have accumulated a total of over 50 years of
paperweight experience and expertise.
As for the children,
now grown in their own homes, they are still
waiting to see the snow paperweight that
Harvey was going to bring home to
show them so many years ago.
Harvey is a member of the New England
Appraisers Association.
