Classic Vases: creations from Murano

Japan, the United States, Germany, Brazil, and France are only a few of the countries where people come from to see the beauties of Italy. Italy is known for the delicious food, the centenary history behind buildings and palaces, and especially the unique and various landscapes. All these features go beyond imagination if you visit Venice.

The island of Venice could be defined as a rare pearl for being the only one in the world entirely built on water. For centuries, people living here stubbornly recover every piece of land from the water. As a result, the city is a real engineering miracle: a stable building structure is constructed through a system of wooden poles buried in mud. In simple terms, they are pile dwellings built on a brick or marble base.

Following this structured system, all other islands belonging to the Venetian lagoon were constructed. It is possible to notice that all of them share similarities regarding the aspect and the structural design, although they have singular and peculiar features that make them so famous.

One example could be seen in Murano, an island globally renowned for its glassmaking production. This activity has been carried on since the XIII century when Venice was the most powerful economic power in Europe. In that period, the city was the main trade route with the East, where the first glass traces were found. Moreover, during the Roman Empire, glass was used to create bottles and vials.

Glass is not a substance to be found in nature. When this activity started to develop, the crystal was used to create it. Nowadays modern techniques allow forming colorful shades and more resistant pieces of glass. The raw materials necessary are sand, limestone, and sodium. Then they are all put together to be heated in enormous furnaces at 1300 °C. At this temperature, all the ingredients will melt to obtain a transparent and fragile substance: glass.

Once the Master takes the glass out of the furnace with a specific tool, he begins to model it. The shapes and forms created are all inside the artisan’s mind before even starting to work.At YourMurano, you can see all the magnificent objects realized: they vary from simple and classic objects to eccentric and biggest models. Every request will be satisfied by the skilled hands of our glass Masters.

There exist mainly three techniques to shape glass: glass blowing, pressing technique, and glass-light processing. Through the glass blowing technique, the artisan blows inside a can to dilate a hot ball of glass, then the final form is obtained by modeling it with specific tools. Instead, with pressing, the glass is taken outside the furnace and put into the mold desired.

However, Masters frequently use glass-light processing: they heat a glass stick on a sort of blowtorch to form an incandescent ball of glass.

On the website of YourMurano, you can find many Classic Vases created with the glassblowing technique. They are a true inspiration from Italian decorative design: perfect to enlighten your living room!