A paperweight is a small, heavy object designed to hold down loose papers. It is placed on top of papers to keep them from blowing away in a breeze or from moving under the strokes of a painting brush. The first glass paperweights were made in the early 1840s in Venice and France, and their manufacture spread rapidly to other parts of Europe and the United States. While glass paperweights were no longer fashionable in the early 20th century, the craft of making them revived in the 1950s. Today, paperweights are no longer just spheroidal glass objects, but may be cubes, cylinders, or more organic forms.