CORKSCREW WITH PAPERWEIGHT HANDLE

Perthshire Paperweights Ltd., is a small company in Crieff, Scotland. A very interesting history of this company by Richard Simpson appeared in the July 1, 1995 issue of Antiques & Collecting Magazine (Lightner Publishing Corp). The article gives interesting details about the various families involved in early glass manufacturing which eventually led to the founding of Perthshire Paperweights Ltd. in 1968.

I have had a corkscrew in my collection for a number of years which has a brass plated frame and worm topped off by a paperweight (above photo). The shank of the corkscrew is marked “ENGLAND” but, unfortunately, I knew nothing of its origins until I came across the Perthshire article.

The creators of the corkscrews were originally from Barcelona, Spain. Salvador Ysart moved to France and on the Britain in 1915. He and his four sons found work at the Leith Flint Glass Company in Edinburgh, Scotland. They later moved to Glasgow to work for the Cochrane Glass Works and then on to Perth to work for John Moncrieff & Sons.

Paul Ysart experimented with paperweights at Moncrieff and in 1963 he left to work for Caithness Glass, Wick. In 1973 he started his own business at Harland in Wick.

The rest of the Ysarts left Moncrieff, to start their own company on the banks of the River Tay, Perth. In 1948, they hired Jack Allen. They continued to make the glass products and marketed them under the name Vasart. From the start of their new business, the Ysart brothers made paperweights in quantity. The Lassman company purchased some of their miniature paperweights It was this manufacturer of bar hardware such as corkscrews, bottle openers, cocktail stirrers, etc. that was responsible for the corkscrew I own.



email: corkscrew@bullworks.net

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