Caithness paperweights by Caithness Glass Ltd takes their name from the county in which its home town of Wick is to be found, at the north-easterly extremity of the British Isles.
The company was found in 1961 by Robin Sinclair, 2nd Viscount Thurso, an RAF Flight Lieutenant (reconnaissance) who became a businessman and politician after his wartime career became redundant.
Paul Ysart joined the Viscount’s enterprise in 1963, but it was not until Colin Terris was recruited six years later that Caithness glass paperweight production was embraced commercially (with the assistance of Ysart’s apprentice, Peter Holmes (of later Selkirk renown).
Eschewing standard millefiori and lampwork designs from the early stages of their paperweight production, Caithness embraced unusual and abstract compositions, created in limited editions intended to appeal to collectors at home and abroad. Terris’s arrival coincided with the moon landings, and he eagerly caught the zeitgeist with a series of celestially-themed paperweights which proved exceptionally popular; he also founded the Caithness Collectors Society to make the most of the demand for the company’s products.
The next great leap forward for Caithness came in the early 1980’s with the acquisition of the naming rights and intellectual property of Whitefriars Glass when the latter ceased trading. True to their business model, Caithness instigated the production of an annual Whitefriars limited edition paperweight.
The centre of production was moved to Perth shortly after the Whitefriars takeover, along with a further factory being started in Oban and the expansion of the original Wick location.
