A Fragile Legacy: The History, and Future, of Murano Glass

A FRAGILE LEGACY: THE HISTORY, AND FUTURE, OF MURANO GLASS

As Cabana launches a new collection of elegant Murano glassware, Francesca Simpson explores the intriguing, millennia-long history and enduring appeal of the highly specialist craft, now facing an uncertain future.

BY FRANCESCA SIMPSON | ART & CULTURE | 28 MARCH 2024

Glassware may well be ephemeral; its innate fragility means that relatively little has survived from its origins, many thousands of years ago in Egypt and Eastern Mesopotamia. But, in a sense, it is exactly this quality, and vulnerability, that lends glass such an enduring appeal; and nowhere better encapsulates this history and legacy than the island of Murano in the Venetian lagoon.

Through a millennia of craftsmanship (beginning as early as the 8th century), enduring tradition, constant innovation, and brilliant artistry, Murano's workshops have become uniquely synonymous with the making of exquisitely fine objects, be they practical and utilitarian or whimsically creative. Leading brands, including Casa Cabana, still turn to Murano's artisans for their unique skills and experience.

It was not ever thus, however. Originally, these skilled glassware artisans inhabited Venice, but they were effectively exiled to Murano, one of more than 100 islands scattered throughout the Venetian lagoon at the end of the 13th century.

The Venetian island of Murano © Ashley Hicks, Cabana N15.

Fear of fire in a predominantly wooden city lent pariah status to the glassmasters and their roaring furnaces, although historians now believe the enforced exile was likely more a means of isolating and controlling what was fast becoming an extremely lucrative trade. Further measures prohibited members of the guild from leaving the islands, which effectively saw them become gilded cages for the families of the artisans who, though socially privileged, remained captive to their craft.

Centuries of refinement and innovation followed, and techniques that have endured. Still today, glassmasters work with an assistant ('sirvente' or 'garzonetto'), shaping the liquid glass using a blowpipe, pulling, stretching, even cutting it while adding color, gold leaf and silver to give each piece its unique coloration and design.

Naturally, no two pieces are ever the same, and the process is exhaustive: liquid glass is reheated, reworked, shaped with soaked wood blocks while still molten and left to cool before the final piece is perfected through a process of 'moleria'.

Abandoned Murano palazzos © Ashley Hicks, and Casa Cabana's contemporary Murano glassware, including hand-painted Bedside Set and Fenicio glasses.

Murano, ideally placed at the confluence of East and West, blossomed in the 15th and 16th centuries. Its artisans invented processes like cristallo (clear glass), which allowed for the production of mirrors, and lattimo (milk glass) that mimicked the properties of coveted Chinese porcelain.

Borrowing other craftsmens' innovations and techniques, developing many of their own, and jealously guarding their trade secrets, allowed for a centuries-long flowering of creativity and talent in Murano. By the 17th century, however, an inevitable decline set in, and the esoteric trade secrets were purloined by newly arrivistes centres of production in Bohemia, England and France.

While innovation continued, the decline of Venice as a commercial center, along with changing trade routes, the hammer blow of Napoleon’s 1797 invasion, the abolition of the guild system and the subsequent assumption of Habsburg rule, brought about - in the early 1800s - the nadir for the glassblowers of Murano.

Undoubtedly daunted by the combined threat of foreign regulation, competition and the city state’s decline, the flame continued to burn. By the late 1800s, Murano began its slow but spectacular rebirth. Arising, phoenix-like, from newly fired furnaces, the island once more attained its rightful status as a master glass producer, reviving ancient techniques and traditions like murrino (mosaic).

The Venetian island of Murano © Ashley Hicks, Cabana N15. 

Recognising that to be creatively static is essentially to atrophy, Murano embraced innovation, embarking, stylistically, on a creative journey that continues today. Art Nouveau and the Avant-Garde formed the backbone of a renaissance in the fortunes of the colony. Nimble and creative, the glassmasters moved on again, adopting cleaner, more functional silhouettes while retaining the same quality of technique - necessary to achieve their visually unsurpassed creations.

Seamlessly blending centuries of craftsmanship with an open-minded creativity, the artisans of Murano - although now facing significant challenges with Europe in the grips of an energy crisis - continue, artistically, at the very apogee of their metier.

The pandemic, the floods, and now the equally unprecedented gas crisis, have all led, somewhat inevitably, to the closures of furnaces. Equally, a younger generation of islanders are not immune to environmental soul searching, given the Murano glassware industry's dependence upon an emission-heavy process.

However, be they the quirky glass animals of the '30s or magnificent chandeliers, each piece of Murano-produced glassware is imbued with the island's DNA. It is this resilience, and history, in the face of an ever-changing world that allows one to hope that Murano's guildsmen and women will survive this setback. It is, after all, just the latest in a centuries-long line of existential threats to their work and way of life.