By Porter Lang
Glassmakers on Murano were forbidden to leave. A law of 1295 said so in plain terms, which tells you how seriously Venice guarded this trade.
The move to Murano itself has a date. A Venetian law of November 8, 1291 confined most of the city’s glassmaking to the island. The official reason was fire: furnaces burned hot and constant, and Venice was mostly wood. Many historians read a second motive. Put every glassmaker in one place and their secrets are easier to watch. Rules were already tight before the move. A 1271 law barred imported foreign glass and the hiring of foreign glassworkers. Tradition adds grim penalties for anyone who revealed or took the secrets abroad.
The glass that came out of that controlled place is the reason Murano’s name still carries weight. Cristallo, a nearly colorless soda glass, is credited to Angelo Barovier, with the oldest known reference dated May 24, 1453. It was considered Europe’s clearest glass. Murano’s glassmakers also developed lattimo, an opaque white milk glass meant to look like porcelain, and are associated with millefiori, filigree work and aventurine.
The monopoly did not last. In 1612 a Florentine priest, Antonio Neri, published L’Arte Vetraria, The Art of Glass, which set Venetian methods down in print for anyone to read. By the later sixteenth century the Republic’s effort to hold its near-monopoly, mainly by keeping skilled workers inside its territory, was already failing.
Furnaces still run on Murano, and Murano has a number of glass factories and a few individual artists’ studios. When you shop, ask where and by whom a piece was actually made.