When we were working with our bead maker, we made this short video. It gives you some idea of the steps involved in making a complicated bead like this. But even before she sits down to turn on the “canello” the torch used in Murano, she has already assembled the fragments of mosaic canes, color…
The latest crisis facing Murano furnaces is the exorbitant increase in Methane prices. Methane is the gas used to melt the sand into glass in most of the furnaces in Murano. It is piped under the lagoon directly to Murano. The latest is a double whammy occurring on the tails of the shut-down for COVID.…
Venice Glass Week of 2021 was exciting but exhausting. There were so many exhibits, workshops that it would take a month to enjoy them all. There were exhibits not only in Venice, Murano and Giudecca but also in Mestre, the town before the bridge. In all, between open studios, gallery exhibits and events there were…
Many people think traditional mouth blowing glass is synonymous with glassblowing but that’s only a type of it. A more precise method to create glass apparatuses known as lathe blown glass has also gained the attention of many bead enthusiasts. And this is why here’s a complete guide by us on mouth-blown and lathe blown glass and…
Only a bead stringer would understand how difficult it is to complete a bead work without leftovers. How many times have you added beads to your bead soup stash? You don’t want to dispose of them, but you aren’t sure what to do with them. Did you know that with little effort you can turn…
Taking a walk down memory lane, 25 years ago in August we made our first buying trip to Venice. Now why our Italian son-in-law never thought to tell us that Italy is “Closed” in August is still a mystery. We arrived with our little indexed list of glass blowers, indexed by location and type of…
Here’s a peek inside the dichroic facility of Sanberg Coatings, where all our Murano Glass goes for the added bling or as I think, the magic machine that gives us all these added colors. The technology is called “vacuum thin film deposition” and was discovered in 1887. It took military and aerospace needs to support…
This August marks 23 years that we have been working in Murano and Venice with our wonderful bead makers. It started as a hobby, well not even that, friends wanted the beautiful necklaces that I had bought in Murano. Little did I know that loading my bags with goodies for friends would lead 1)a change…
Calcedonia (Chalcedony) is a glass made with silver and other elements (glass is above all a chemical reaction which takes place in heat), developed in Murano during the mid fifteenth century. Angelo Barovier is attributed with developing this polychrome glass around 1460 (the 15th Century).The Barovier name has been synonymous with Murano Glass since the furnaces…
This is a question we get often, especially from new beaders who have just been their first bead show. Are all Venetian Beads are annealed. She had heard that annealing makes the beads stronger. What is annealing? The word comes from the metallurgy and materials science where it has long been recognized it increases the metals ductility…