Venetian Glass
Glass and glassmaking skills were spread throughout Europe some two thousand years ago by the Romans who made bottles, vases, and hollow vessels in Rome for supply throughout their empire.
There was a decline in glassmaking when the Roman Empire fell, but the success of Venice as a trading center attracted glass craftsmen from Syria and other eastern centers to Italy. Venice had established itself as a glassmaking center as early as 450 A.D.
Venetian glass production dates back to 982, with a document that makes reference to a bottle maker called Dominicus Phiolarius (from it fiole: bottles). In 1090 a Petrus Flabianicus was also mentioned.
However, no Venetian glass preceding the XVth century has arrived to us, while the glass of the Islamic art arrived to Venice from Constantinople after the IVth Crusade (1204), is kept in the Treasure of St. Mark.
The development of Venetian glass factories was quick: in 1271 a first “capitulary” was introduced to regulate the art of glass making. The importation of foreign glass into Venice was forbidden and foreign glassmakers were prevented from working in the city.
The Guild of glassmakers was under the authority and protection of the Republic, and their formulas were highly valued and kept strictly secret. These “partite” or recipes were handed down from father to son and transcribed into secret books. In fact these secret techniques were of such great importance as to make the difference between the glass produced in Venice and that of other European glass centers.
Probably starting with glass mosaic tiles, glassmaking continued to flourish in Venice. In the thirteenth century there was a Glassmakers' Guild, and in 1292 an ordinance was passed in the city, which banished glassmaking to the island of Murano in the Venetian lagoon. The reason was partly to protect other buildings from fires (which commonly started in glassworks - the Great Fire of London is believed to have started in a glassworks); and partly to retain a monopoly on the glass trade. The death penalty was used as a threat to keep glassworkers on Murano, and it was even forbidden to teach foreigners the trade secrets of glassmaking.
Venice got an indirect knowledge of “enameled” glass of Syrian origins that influenced enormously the creation of those goblets and stem glasses with enamel decoration that date back to the XIVth and XVth century, like Aldrevandin’s glass and the one kept in Switzerland in the Cathedral of Coira.
The decoration of Venetian glass was also influenced by the craftsmen who arrived from the Middle East, after the Fall of Damascus in 1400 and of Constantinople’s in 1435, which closed definitely the history of the Roman Empire.
Towards the half of the XVth century, above all because of these external influences, the production of glass with dark colors decorated and painted with bright colored enamel was successful.
Throughout the middle ages Venetian glass led the world. Their great secrets included the formula for Cristallo glass, a very clear transparent glass, which was particularly well suited to elaborate trailing, and thinly blown, intricate designs. They also used thinly sliced millefiori canes, and many of their designs were similar to popular Roman designs, albeit thinner and more delicate. Another of their great inventions was lattimo or milk glass, an opaque milky white glass. They made some white cups and beakers, but mostly lattimo glass was used in the form of thin canes to make elaborate lacy patterns in clear glass.
Venice reacted to this competition producing more and more original objects, with fancier and more exuberant decorations: glasses and goblets with handles and decorated by figures of animals, “acquerecce” and “versatoi” (jugs and ewers) ship-shaped, entirely made of glass, fruit-stands supported and decorated by serpents, dragons, sea-horses, dolphins etc.
Venetian supremacy in glassmaking was challenged and overtaken during the 19th & 20th centuries by glassmakers in Bohemia and England. More recently, the Contemporary (Studio) Glass Movement was slow to take off in Italy, but is well in evidence there today. |
