VeniceStyle

Why does glass fascinate, bewitch and amaze us?
Why does it look magic?
Is it because like very few materials it shares the four elements?

Fire creates it, air, that is blowing, gives it form, water tempers it and earth creates it because glass is actually made of sand.

As a matter of fact the raw materials of which glass is made are silica, coming from sand, combined with lime and alkali like soda and potassium and sometimes with metals (for example iron or lead, the latter one used since the 17th century).

As in the case of many other technical inventions, we can't say who it was that invented glass, even if a legend tells that some Phoenician shepherds spent the night in a glade with their flock of sheep, and, as it was very cold and windy, they lit a big fire in order to keep warm and to be seen by other shepherds who could come and get warm at their fire.

They kept the fire going all night and other shepherds did come to get warm.

The next morning everybody was going to resume their journey, when among the ashes and cinders they saw a substance that was getting harder and harder, brighter and brighter.

They had discovered glass: it was a gift from the gods who rewarded the shepherds' generosity and altruism in sharing their fire with others.

The first glass mixtures appeared around III Millenium b.C. in Egypt and Mesopotamia, countries rich of siliceous sand, the main glass component.

The most antique glass working systems allowed the production only of small size objects, used as ornaments or during rituals.

The first glass vases belong to 1500 b.C.

At that time the most used techniques consisted melting glass around a sandy ground, cutting it cold and smoothing it by a wheel.

Over the years, the glass blowing art developed in Syria, Egypt and then in Rome, giving a remarkable commercial impulse to the glass working.

At the beginning of X century, in the venetian Glass works and, later in Murano island Glass works, glass working reached a more qualitative and systematic production, becoming a real and beautiful art in itself.

Venice was perhaps the only glass centre that constituted an element of continuity between Roman and present times.

Recent archaeological excavations and subsequent studies over a glasshouse dating back to the 7th century A:D, on the island of Torcello, enforced the hypothesis that Romanic craftsmen, formerly working at Altino and Aquileia, moved to the lagoon starting the production of glassware for domestic use and mosaic tessera for the cathedrals of Torcello, Burano and Murano.

By the 13th century glass-making was widespread, with many craftsmen united in the Arte dei Fiolari, controlled by the government of the Serenissima, jealous of its craftsmen and their secrets.

Glass makers were not allowed to leave the town and the Veneto state without a permit, otherwise they would be considered traitors. In order to compensate this hateful constraint, it was decreed that if a nobleman married the daughter of a glass maker, he would keep and pass on his privileges to his progeny (even if the glass maker was not noble).

In order to prevent the bursting out of fires originating from furnaces, in 1291, the Maggior Consiglio moved furnaces to the island of Murano, allowing the presence only of small kilns where verixelli were produced (coloured gems in imitation of precious stones).

In this period Venetian glassware was exported to Germanic countries.

In the 16th century glass makers coming from Val d'Elsa and Pisa in Tuscany were working in Venice: they introduced Tuscan styles and forms, while a craftsman from Germany started producing mirrors, while mosaic tessera and glass for stained windows were produced thanks to French glass makers.

Also the first known spectacles were made in this period (about 1317).

- A. Dorigato, Il Museo vetrario di Murano, Milano 1986.
- D. Klein, W. Lloyd, Storia del vetro, edizione a cura di A. Dorigato, Novara 1984.
- A. Larese, E. Zerbunati, Vetri antichi di raccolte concordiesi e polesane, Fiesso d'Artico 1998. Le tecniche artistiche, Milano 1978
- G. Mariacher, Il vetro soffiato da Roma antica a Venezia, Milano 1960.
- Mille anni di arte del vetro a Venezia, Venezia 1982.
- A. Raccanelli, Tecnologia dei materiali e chimica applicata, Padova 1991.
- G. Zampieri, Vetri antichi del Museo Civico Archeologico di Padova, Fiesso d'Artico 1998
- www.mestieriarte.it