The paperweight world lost one of its most important pioneers this past year when Paul Jokelson passed away November 24 at his home in New York at the age of 97. For many years now, Paul has been affectionately called "The King of Paperweights" because of his pivotal role in the renaissance of modern paperweight making.

As a young man in Paris, Paul began his love affair with paperweights with his purchase of the "Bird in the Nest" for about $25. After this first fascinating discovery in what was to become a lifelong quest, Jokelson went on to search for other paperweights in order to know more about them. But he found that after a one-hundred year hiatus in which glass paperweights fell out of vogue among collectors and glass artists, few paperweights were available, and no one knew how to make them.

In the early1950s, Jokelson persuaded the Saint Louis and Baccarat glass factories of France to re-invent the art form. They did, and thus began the subsequent rally among glass workers world-wide to pursue this most difficult of all the glass arts, evolving into the profuse and expansive art form it is today.

So important was Jokelson's influence on the world of glass paperweights, many people wonder if the art form would have ever been revived without him.

In view of his monumental contribution, his family and the International Paperweight Society Foundation have set up a scholarship fund in Paul Jokelson's name to continue his lifelong legacy of promoting the art.