In all these cases people look into the glass globe without really seeing it, but rather unwittingly gazing beyond it into their on unconscious- the fears and desires that wait silently until the least-expected stimulus triggers their remembrance.
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Paperweights' oneiric quality reached an extraordinary degree with the "Victorian snowstorms", or blizzard weights, which when shaken produced a flurry of snowflakes, creating the foremost souvenir. Although it is not known exactly when the "Snowflakes" (usually made from sand, sawdust, collophonium or celluloid) were added, glass spheres including a motif, scene or subject (often religious) and filled with water to enhance the impression of the included item were recorded in Europe since at least the sixteenth century. However, the snow globe was probably born as a toy, perhaps in Thuringia, a town famous for its Christmas ornaments. Just like the millefiori before them, snow globe made there first recorded appearance in the context of massive trade, the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1878, where seven French exhibitors of decorated glass showed "Paperweights of hollow balls filled with water, containing a man with an umbrella. These balls also contained a white powder which, when the paperweight was turned upside down, falls (sic) in imitation of a snowstorm."
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