Statue of Liberty New York Glass Dome Souvenir Paperweight, Sepia Photo, c. 1900–1930

The Piece

An American souvenir paperweight of the kind sold at the Battery and on the Liberty Island ferry a century ago: a solid half-dome of clear glass, flat on the bottom, with a photographic print of the Statue of Liberty set beneath it so that the thick glass magnifies the image. The print is a sepia photograph of the statue on its pedestal, titled Statue of Liberty in a hand-lettered script at the lower left and New York City in the same hand at the right, with the paper toned to a warm amber under the glass. The dome is heavy for its size, the glass clear with a faint yellow cast, ground flat at the base, and the underside is covered in its old green felt, now worn thin at the edges.

The paperweight is sound. The glass has light surface scratches and a few small nicks at the ground edge of the base where it has been set down over the years, the print has toned and darkened and is lightly spotted at the margin, and the felt is worn and lifting a little at one side. It has not been opened or restored.

History & Provenance

The magnifying glass paperweight with a picture under it was one of the great souvenirs of the American tourist trade from the 1880s to the 1930s. The domes were pressed in clear glass by the bottle and tableware houses of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and the picture, a photograph or a chromolithograph of a hotel, a courthouse, a resort or a monument, was pasted to the flat base and covered with felt, so that every resort and city in the country had its own. The Statue of Liberty, dedicated in 1886, was the most photographed subject in New York and the most sold, and paperweights like this one went home in trunks and carpetbags to every state, which is why they turn up far from the harbor. The hand-lettered captions are the tell of the earlier examples, before printed titles took over.

No maker's mark is present and the paperweight is offered as an unattributed American souvenir piece. The dating rests on the materials and the construction rather than style alone: the heavy pressed glass dome with a ground base, the sepia photographic print with hand-lettered captions and the felt-covered base are all consistent with manufacture between about 1900 and 1930.

Product Details

Why It Belongs in Your Home

This is a desk piece with a story, the kind of small object that holds down a stack of letters, sits on a bookshelf beside the New York books or lives in a tray on an entry table. The amber-toned photograph under thick glass reads as a window into another century, and it makes a natural gift for a New Yorker, a traveler, an immigrant family or anyone who collects the city. For a shop or designer client it is the authentic early souvenir that styles a desk vignette and sells on the image.