Murano Glass

Ever since the Syrians invented glass-blowing in the 1st century, the craft has always had a certain air of magic to it, an alchemical process that transforms sand with fire and air into something hard and clear.

The magical aspect was the key of Werner Herzog’s 1970s film Heart of Glass, in which the entire cast of non-actors played their roles while under hypnosis. The plot centred around a German glass-manufacturing family, who had forgotten the ancestral secret of making a rare ruby crystal; there are fascinating scenes of men blowing glass before infernal kilns.

The Romans were the first in Europe to refine this alchemy into art. Among those who took refuge from the Huns in the Lagoon, there must have been a Roman glassblower or two, even though the first Venetian document to mention one dates from the 980s. The fragments of glass that survive from that period are simple and utilitarian.