Venetian Glass Beads

Venetian Glass Beads

Movable Cultural Heritage

Venetian production dates back to the fourteenth century. It is a representation of mastery of a material, glass, and element the fire. It endures specific knowledge and shared skills, indicates the use of specific traditional tools and procedures. Skilled artisans melt, blow, shape the coloured glass to obtained the shapes. Venice, the true European capital of glass, glass beads were produced in Murano and in all the Venetian territory. Since it was such a valuable product for trading, the center of production moved from Venice to island Murano to avoid the great risk of fire in keeping the kilns. The production represents a traditional knowledge handed down from generation to generation for more than 700 years. After the first World War of dissolution of colonialism, the beads lost their original function of as trading commodity. It become more of art, jewels and personal ornaments The process generally involves three preparatory positions, the ‘perlai’ (craftsmen of glass beads), ‘molatore’ and ‘impiraressa’, a women who inserts the beads through precise movements and creates various artefacts, and the glassmaker. The art of glass beads became part of the List of Intangible Cultural Heritaage since 2020.

Venetian

18th Century

yuqi2022

English

Physical Object

397

16/04/2022

25/04/2022

Metropolitan Museum of Art

current,45.4408,12.3155;

TEXT

648

Glass