Cameo Carved Diatreta and Insculpture Magnolia Paperweight

This cameo carved paperweight began with a single untouched blank of clear glass with external layers of color. Using a precise sandblasting technique known as insculpture, the glass is hollowed out, revealing the central image as negative space. In a time-intensive process, the colored layers of glass along the periphery are carved in high relief and drastically undercut, creating a diatreta – an open lattice work design, or 'shell' of decoration, connected to its base by only a few delicate points.