images on this website are copyrighted by Papier Presse 2014
Christopher Lee Murphy Buzzini was born on December 12, 1949 in Yosemite National Park, California, where he lived until he was thirteen years old. His dad worked for the park service, and Chris recalls seeing Ansel Adams walking through the park with his large view camera. As a young boy Chris would sit outside for hours, doing watercolor paintings of his surroundings. Living in this beautiful location he developed a love of and an appreciation for nature that is evident in his paperweights. He now lives and has his studio in northern Oregon.
While pursuing an AA degree in fine arts at Shasta College in Redding, California, Chris was exposed to glassblowing for the first time. Buzzini intensely pursued glassblowing, eventually setting up his own “backyard” studio. In 1973, before completing his BA degree, Chris left school to work as a partner at Orient & Flume Art Glass in Chico. For two years in the late seventies Buzzini operated a glass studio, Bridgeton Studio, in New Jersey. Having worked at Orient & Flume, and later working for Lundberg Studios and Correia Art Glass, three of the leading art glass studios in the country, Buzzini became an expert in production studio glass.
After over a decade working in larger glass studios, Chris decided to pursue his own artistic desires. In 1985 Buzzini began experimenting with lampwork, and in 1986 he left Correia to establish his own studio to make lampwork paperweights. His weights feature realistic representations of delicate flowers such as azaleas, lilacs, morning glories, and violets. His flowers appear in mixed bouquets or in weights featuring a single type of flower. In weights that are graceful, this artist reveals a strong sense of design and a wonderful eye for color. Excerpted from The Dictionary of Glass Paperweights, Paul H. Dunlop, Papier Presse 2009.
