Murano Glass Making and Its Magic

Simone Cenedese An Authentic Murano Glass Master

The art of Murano glass making can be traced back to before the first millennium in Venice: a document written by a Benedict monk called “Fiolario”, was found about phials he manufactured for private use. Even though Folario was not known as typical glass master in Venice, the tradition was started and was handed down from generation to generation.

Thanks to the fact that Venice was a seaport and commercial trading place, it was quite receptive when it came to cultural fusions. It is known, that many trades went on with the Orient, especially with the Arabs and Byzantines. There is no doubt about the influence of the ancient glass-making tradition of the Phoenicians, Syrians and Egyptians. The trading of Murano glass took place already in those days.

Originally most of the furnaces were mainly located on the main island in Venice and only in 1291 they were moved to Murano, fearing fire and destruction of the city’s mostly wooden buildings. Since then time has literally stopped on this island and the only difference one can find in a furnace today is, that the ovens are gas-powered instead of running on wood and coal until fifty years ago. However the glass master of today works in exactly the same way as in the past.

In a technological world where everything has to be fast, immediate and people do not want to wait for anything, Murano’s glass making tradition takes a special place. Every single item, that is produced is the magical encounter between fire , sand (silica) and hands . Everything follows the slow rythm which is typical in Venice and all its surrounding islands.

The fire is on night and day as the ovens run 24/7, even though the Murano glass masters only work between 6.00 AM and 4.00 PM from Monday to Friday. Due to the high temperatures in the ovens, which can reach above 900°C (1650°F), as the glass paste in its magmatic state reaches that temperature, the internal refractory bricks are worn out and have to be replaced every two to three months.

The sand , which is blended together with minerals and metal oxides -types and quantities vary according to the desired outcome according to specific recipes jealously kept secret in each furnace- is transformed into boiling magma and is kept inside the melting pots

The skilled hands of the Glass Master dip into the magma with the blow pipe in order to start the creation of every single piece. He is challenged in an ongoing process between rotating the blow pipe so that the glass paste keeps the desired shape while working on it, putting it back into the oven to bring it back up to its original temperature and taking it out again to work on it still while rotating the blow pipe.

If the Glass Master fails to put his blow pipe back into the oven in time and the item he is working on reaches a temperature below 800°C (1470°F) there will be a small explosion. The glass will pop into pieces due to the so called thermic shock.
Considering that an average room temperature is around 20°C (68°F), between 800°C (1470°F) and 20°C (68°F) there is an enormous thermic bounce.

Even though a Glass Master might produce over and over the same model, every single item is a unique piece, as all of them are handmade and not one will be equal to the other. The attention, that was placed on every “masterpiece”, that came out of the oven centuries ago is the same today.

When talking about Venetian or Murano glass everybody thinks about the skilled glass blowers, who have been apprentices for year and years before becoming masters themselves after twenty, but nobody really knows, that within a furnace there are three types of masters, that learn from craftsmen’s traditions handed down from generation to generation.