Paul Joseph Stankard

Paul Stankard died peacefully on Tuesday 6 October 2026 at his home in Mantua, New Jersey, surrounded by his family. He was 83. Local press reported that he died after a long illness; no specific cause was made public.

Tributes came from across the glass world. The Museum of Glass in Tacoma remembered him as a treasured friend, generous with his time and knowledge, whose mentorship fostered new generations of glassmakers. A visitation and Mass of Christian Burial were held on 17 October 2026 at the Church of the Incarnation in Mantua, arranged by Smith Funeral Home; burial was private.

He was survived by his wife, Patricia, his five children, six grandchildren and six siblings. He was predeceased by his parents, his brother Martin Jr. and his sister Katherine.

Paul Joseph Stankard was born on 7 April 1943 in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, the second of nine children of Martin Stankard Sr. and Mary Florence Stankard, nee McGivney, in an Irish Catholic family. He moved to New Jersey as a young man.

In his autobiography he described the struggles of a dyslexic child in a school system that did not yet recognise dyslexia: he was mistakenly assigned a low IQ score, labelled a slow learner and graduated from high school near the bottom of his class. In 1963 he graduated from Salem County Vocational Technical Institute in Carneys Point, New Jersey, now Salem Community College, with a technical certificate in scientific glassblowing. The college later gave him an honorary associate degree in glass art.

For his first years in work Stankard was a scientific glassblower, making laboratory apparatus for chemical companies. In 1967 he worked under Francis Whittemore at Philco-Ford; he had met Whittemore at Salem, where Whittemore taught. Inspired by Whittemore and by memories of the Blaschka glass flowers at Harvard University, he began experimenting with paperweights in 1969, working in his utility room at home while keeping his industrial job.

When he exhibited early pieces at a craft show on the Atlantic City boardwalk, the art dealer Reese Palley saw them and sponsored him to work full time on glass art. At the time, American paperweights mostly imitated mid nineteenth century French floral designs. Stankard worked in the same tradition but with a new insistence on botanical accuracy, refining his flowers, roots and seeds until many people believed real plants had been encased in the glass. Other makers, mostly American, followed his lead, and he is largely credited with changing the paperweight's status from craft to fine art. His later work included the Assemblage series, such as Golden Orb with Flowers and Apparitions (2003), now at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art.

His pieces are in the Art Institute of Chicago, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Musee des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Corning Museum of Glass, WheatonArts, the Wiener Museum of Decorative Arts, the Akron Art Museum and the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, among more than seventy museums. The Museum of Glass in Tacoma, where he was a visiting artist in 2005, toured the exhibition Beauty Beyond Nature: The Glass Art of Paul Stankard.

He taught at Salem Community College, Rowan University, Pilchuck Glass School and Penland School of Craft, and was artist in residence at Salem and at Rowan. He wrote four books: No Green Berries or Leaves: The Creative Journey of an Artist in Glass (2007), Spark the Creative Flame: Making the Journey from Craft to Art (2013), Craft as Career: A Guide to Achieving Excellence in Art-making (2016) and Inspiration from the Art of Paul Stankard: A Window into My Studio and Soul (2022). Honours included honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees from Rowan University (1997) and Muskingum University (2007), election as a Fellow of the American Craft Council (2000) and the Glass Art Society Lifetime Achievement Award (2015).

Stankard married Patricia A. LaPatrick, whom his family described as his steadfast partner and greatest champion. They lived for decades in Mantua, New Jersey, where the woods around their home fed much of his imagery. They had five children, Christine, Pauline, Katherine, Joseph and Philip, and six grandchildren.

After learning in 1972 that he was dyslexic, he built a lifelong habit of self education through recorded and audible books, and he wrote openly about overcoming low self esteem. A man of faith, in later years he belonged to a virtual Bible study group called The Schmoes and to a Bible study group at the Church of the Incarnation in Mantua.

Stankard changed how collectors and museums see the glass paperweight, and his naturalistic style became the model for a generation of flameworkers. Through his teaching, his books and his frank account of growing up with dyslexia, he encouraged students who, like him, had been written off at school. He completed a final manuscript, The Workbench and the Divine: A Life Crafting Beauty, shortly before his death, and his work remains on view in museum collections in the United States and Europe.