The story of Murano glass – From inferno to the world museums
A trip through Italy is all about beauty, art and history. Everywhere you turn, there is an ancient villa, or a ruin of a palace, or a thousand years old orchard. There is light like nowhere else in the world, and smiling people, music, wine and food.
It is the history that mostly captivates the imagination of people form the New World when they visit Italy. Walking through two thousand years old streets boggles the imagination. Getting married in an eight hundred years old palace is something that becomes a part of family lore. Everywhere you look, there is a story of the past. Sometimes glorious, often violent, but always human, and never forgotten.
Visiting Murano is, just like visiting Venice, a must. For many people, Venice is Italy: ancient glorious palaces, sleek gondolas slowly gliding through canals, old churches still working after more than half of century since they were built.
If Venice is Italy, Murano is glass. This beautiful old island city is immersed in the history of glass, and its ancient palaces hide among them equally old glass workshops, which still function the same way they worked eight hundred years ago when they were built. There is something incongruous about this mix of romantic Gothic architecture interspersed with a touch of industry, regardless how old. But, that mix is the story of Murano and Murano glass.
Enormous furnaces reach temperature of 2700 °F and transform piles of fine, white sand into liquid gold, or a rainbow of colors, ready to be shaped by the skilled hands of glassmakers.
You have to visit one of these glassmaking workshops to understand the magic of glass. The picture is straight from Dante’s Inferno. Horrendous heat forms beads of sweat on the faces of glassmakers, and globs of fiery, not entirely liquid, glass in their hands quickly transforms into objects of unbelievable beauty. They blow their pipes into the globs of glass, turn it and shape it, until they are satisfied and the shape is exactly as it was in their imagination.
There is no way around it, making glass is an art that requires very special people. Murano has been passing this passion for glass for more than eight hundred years, from one family member to another. There were times when it was forbidden to leave Murano, in order to preserve the secret of Murano glass. The secrets made Murano famous all over the world, they made it the center of glass art highly appreciated among the rich and powerful. Murano glass was too precious and too expensive to fall into hands of ordinary people.
Murano produced some object of breathtaking beauty from its furnaces. They decorate museums, palaces and homes of royal families, famous hotels, homes of rich and famous.
Today, Murano glass is accessible to the rest of the world. Small pieces of art, or jewelry, find their way from Murano furnaces to the shops all over the world, and to the hearts of those who appreciate the beauty of glass and the magic of transformation from the pile of sand to the piece of art.
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<a href=”http://www.glassofvenice.com”>Murano Glass</a> | Murano Glass Jewelry and Accessories imported directly from Venice, Italy. For details visit http://www.glassofvenice.com
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