Customer Reviews

Murano - A History of Glass pb (I Piccoli Di Arsenale)

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The book is about glass and how the Murano island glassmakers became the world leaders in the field. It's chock-full of facts, names, and dates -- maddenly without citations for the most part, and a very limited bibliography to boot. There are some irritating omissions -- for example, just how long WAS the forced vacation originally? When was it first legislated? As overviews go, it is fantastic, but it's not going to be a complete work on the subject.

It covers:
* a general world-level history of glass
* how glassmaking moved from Torcello to Murano
* how glassmakers lived and legislation regarding their vocation
* cristallo development and other artistic techniques (including enamelwork)
* how Murano's golden age began, and its subsequent downfall and decline
* glassmaking's rebirth in the modern age
* some information about modern Muranese works

There are a lot of color photos here that will, I am sure, satisfy any glasswork fanatic. It's a tiny little book, smaller than a paperback novel, but there's a lot of information here. Just don't go into it thinking this is going to be some scholarly paper with tons of citations. It's a popular history with the goal in mind of making people more interested in Murano glass.

This book is good for reading on the train to work. And also to date, possibly identify, a piece of glass you have. But not the type of book it is advertised to be; A pocket Reference Guide. Rare and one-of-a-kind items are interesting, but what ordinary person would ever see those in person? Or anything even similar? We thumbed through it at the shop and laughed the whole time.

Murano Glass, often called Venetian glass is made on the island of Murano. The glassblowers were forced to move their factories to the island by the Venetian Republic in 1291. The reason being that the factories represented a fire hazard the buildings of Venice. The glass blowers and their families soon became the leading citizens of the island, some even being allowed to wed into the blue-blooded families of Venice.

One of the things that made the glassmakers of Murano so important was that they were the only people in Europe who knew how to make a mirror. There craft was so closely guarded that they were not allowed to set up in business anywhere outside the Venetian lagoon, to do so, they risked being killed in the night for their troubles.

The book covers all this type of history and the development of the glass process through the ages, from Roman times up to the present day and there are some fine illustrations of the art of the glass maker. There is still a thriving glass industry on the island and many homes throughout the world will have a piece of Murano glass sitting on a shelf somewhere, even though the owner may not know its place of origin.