Venice Highlight - Murano Glass

The most amazing part of Venice, in my opinion, was the visit to a glass factory. There we saw a demonstration of glass blowing which was absolutely incredible to watch. I couldn’t believe how he could take a little blob of glass and with a few twists of the wrist, and a little air through the pipe, a beautiful vase began to appear. Another few blobs and the vase was given handles. Then, as a follow-up parlour trick he fashioned a glass horse for us. Again he started with a blob of molten glass, then he took some pincer type tool and started pulling on the glass to form the legs. In a few minutes he was done. Absolutely fascinating to watch and such a shame to see the beautiful vase (and horse) get dumped back into the furnace to be melted down. If they had been keeping the piece it would have gone into a cooling chamber for 24 hours. I also expect that for pieces that were meant to be sold, they might take more than a few minutes to fashion.

Of course, after the demonstration we were shepherded through the showrooms for a bit of a sales pitch. All of the works we saw were gorgeous - from vases with vibrant colors (made by mixing gold or different compounds with the glass) to ones made with glass beads and different forms of jewellery as well. We looked at a nativity scene made out of glass and would probably have been tempted if it had contained more color (and if the price tag was greatly reduced). We did, however, visit some of the shops along St. Mark’s square and I ended up finding a smaller nativity scene which I did purchase. It’s actually pretty cool because it has Mary, Joseph and Jesus on a gondola - very representative of Venice, I thought.