Murano Jewelry - More Than 500 Years Of History

By Author: Cristina Ciocan
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I might start with: "Did you know?" but... beautiful Murano glass jewelry is famous worldwide!

Murano Glass and especially Murinas handcrafted in jewelry are handmade in the Venetian workshops using a 500 years old technique. For this reason jewels are not completely identical, differences in color and floral pattern make each piece unique and with its own special personality.

A blob of colored glass was dipped into a rod shape. That's how it started. Then, the same blob was dipped into molten glass of various colors until it was formed a wonderful rainbow. All this interesting work was made and a real interesting technique was developed by ancient glass workers from Venice. Their descendants work today still at Venice, still using long rods to form multi color patterns. The rods are then sliced into little pieces handcrafted by artists into amazing jewelry pieces. They called these rods Murrine.

Their history begins when the technique was brought to Venice by Byzantine glass workers, fleeing Constantinople after the defeat in the 4th crusade. But very soon, the artists were confined to the island of Murano ...
... due to the fire risk from their kilns. Murano will become the center of excellence for artistic glassware. That's how they will dominate the market for several hundred years.

The first star pattern has been created by Marietta Barovier, around the end of the 15th Century. She was the daughter of a famous glass worker. The molten glass rod was pressed into a metal mold to make it into a star shaped rod, which was then fired in a cylindrical mold packed with glass powder of a different color. This restored the cylindrical shape, with the star pattern embedded in the center.

Shortly after, different mold patterns were added, leading to the petal shaped designs that characterize today Murano Millefiori glass. Murrine are quite short and fat when first made, about 6 inches long and 3 inches diameter, but they are then drawn out to make a longer rod with a smaller diameter. Cutting repeatedly the rod, and drawing it out again, the design is scaled until it becomes as small as wanted.

During the Renaissance peak of Murano glass production, Murrine were mostly used for making decorative spheres, glass pearls, and walking canes. Classic Millefiori jewelry arrived later, but not before a dark period in Murano's history.

In the 18th Century, Napoleon imposed stiff taxes on Murano glass, he wanted to crush the industry for political reasons. Only a handful of kilns remained open, doing what they could to pass on the glass making skills to successive generations.

Foreign control of the area finally weakened in the early 1800's, and Murano's glass workers exploited the political distractions of the period to rebuild their industry. It was in this period that Murano Millefiori designs started to appear, in the form of Millefiori pendants and other Millefiori jewelry.

Millefiori is an Italian word meaning 'a thousand flowers'. In 1849, it first appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary. This indicates when the rebirth of the technique became common knowledge outside Venice.

I now remember what he said our first client (maybe you?) Who bought such a ring:

"The ring is wonderful: it's colorful, it suits me and makes me special as I wanted!"

But ... How is made that Murano glass? What happens there, in the Venetian workshops for hundreds of years?

The Italians are a nation of passionate people. They love with so much passion, they cook and eat in a frenzy, they argue all the time, they live with all their hearts every moment of life. I think this is why Italy gave the world the greatest artists.

It takes a mountain of passion to create Millefiori patterns!

It's time to say "Once upon a time..." and see how the story begins:

It takes a bit of melted glass on the end of a 1.5 m long metal rods.

By dipping a few times in the molten glass pots of different colors, the volume of the mass increases into a mass composed of layers of glass of different colors.

This glass mass is pressed into a mold in the shape of a star or flower, obtaining the final form of the pattern.

Apply a final layer to maintain the cylindrical shape of the glass. Then a second metal petal pole is attached to the other end of the glass mass.

Two glass makers pull the glass in opposite directions, forming a long, thin rod.

All these maneuvers are made with skill and passion as the glass is hot and malleable. When long glass rods are cooled they can be cut into segments of different lengths, thus obtaining murrinas.

Alan K jewelry designer has created a luxury collection, leading to perfection the art of glass makers. He used rhodium plated silver, authentic Murano glass, scratch-resistant resin and a lot of imagination. Let's keep the surprise and talk about Alan K. ... in the next article.

Some silver jewelry (bijuterii) pieces from the Alan K. collection: bijuterii Murano can be found on Argintarie.ro