such profound jealousy on Murano that his
own life was put in danger. In the only
case of its kind as an exception to the de-
cree of 1291, the Council of Ten allowed
him to transfer his furnace into the city of
Venice.
Briati’s work, and his “magnificent glass
chandeliers to light the salons of the great
noblemen, the theatres and the streets on
solemn occasions”, momentarily provided
oxygen for the declining Venetian glass
production, giving Venetians themselves
the illusion that it might once again rise to
the glories of its past. But the climate of
social and political paralysis which charac-
terized the last years of the Most Serene
Republic of Venice, concurrent with the
economic crisis during the first half of the
XIXth century, determined the end of the
artistic glories of Venetian glass.
Out of Antiquity
the miracle of a renascence
Early XIXth century production, with very
few exceptions, was of decidedly low
quality.
In 1847 there were only about a dozen
working furnaces and the only sector
which was not in crisis was the conterie
bead sector. The production of enamels in
small bricks, of a variety of beads and the
“margherite” known as the beads of
Venice, the conterie, was traditionally sep-
arate from other kinds of production. It
wasn’t until the early part of the century
that an establishment was founded exclu-
sively for the production of glass in rods
and conterie.
In 1861, the Mayor of Murano, who was
committed to the project of collecting and
conserving works in glass and the antique
pieces which constituted the memory of
the art of Murano, founded the Museum of
Glass Art, with the vital collaboration of
Abbot Vincenzo Zanetti, a scholar of glass
history. In the following year the School of
Art for glassworkers was founded.
The institution of the Museum on the is-
land of Murano was the beginning of a
small miracle which led to the renascence
of the entire sector.
A group of masters, Toso, Fuga and
Barovier among them, enraptured by the
suggestive quality of the precious antique
pieces conserved in the Museum, did their
best to reproduce them. The result was the
magnificent Ist Exposition of Glass Art in-
augurated in 1864 and lit by a chandelier
made of 356 parts and 60 lights over four
stories high.
Another important figure in the artistic and
cultural rebirth of Murano glass in the sec-
ond half of the XIXth century, was the
lawyer Antonio Salviati, who first came to
Murano in those years. Salviati founded a
mosaic workshop in Venice and in 1866
founded a furnace in Murano for which he
hired the best masters still working on
Murano.
In the wake of this new enthusiasm and
with the help of English investment capi-
tal, Salviati’s entrepreneuring talent led to
the founding of the first company special-
ized in the production of artistic glass, the
company which would become The Venice
and Murano Glass and Mosaic Company.
The success
of the craftsmen
and the conservative
nature of Murano
The XIXth century was also characterized
by the reappearance of the figure of the
master of the Art-owner of the Furnace,
who was often assisted by artists of the
caliber of Isidoro Seguso and Giuseppe
Barovier, capable of reproducing to perfec-
tion the most beautiful blown glass works
of centuries past.
At the time of the 2nd Murano Exposition
in 1869, there were around 3500 people
employed in the field of glass, most of
them in the production of conterie.
A few years later, in 1871, the glass-
master Vincenzo Moretti was able to re-
produce the Roman “murrine”, which en-
tered the repertory of Murano tech-
niques, as did the re-discovered tech-
niques of fired enamels and graffiti gold-
leaf decoration.
For the last twenty years of the century
the most important companies in the field
were Salviati’s and Barovier’s, the
“Compagnia di Venezia e Murano” found-
ed by Salviati’s ex-partners and run by the
Moretti and Seguso families, “Fratelli
Toso” leaders in traditional blown pieces,
“Francesco Ferro e Figlio”, specialized in
the production of classical forms in cal-
cedonio and opaque vitreous pasta, and
vida fantasia nell’arte dei maestri vetrai,
ma è vero allo stesso tempo che le tecni-
che in uso in Laguna cominciavano ad ap-
parire obsolete e antieconomiche.
Nemmeno l’ennesima sistemazione del
Capitolare dell’Arte, tentativo estremo di
risollevare un mercato ormai agonizzante,
attuata nel 1766 ebbe i risultati sperati: il
fasto delle vetrerie veneziane e gli antichi
splendori s’incamminavano verso l’ormai
inesorabile declino.
Unica eccezione nel panorama, la poliedri-
ca personalità di Giuseppe Briati, padrone
di fornace e figura istituzionale di spicco,
che ottenne nel 1737 il privilegio decen-
nale per la produzione di cristallo finissi-
mo, un cristallo potassico, prodotto secon-
do le tecniche apprese all’estero “presso
paesi lontani e felici in tale artificio”. Ma
dopo due soli anni dalla concessione del
privilegio, Briati stesso si trovò impossibili-
tato a proseguire nell’attività, poiché que-
sta innovativa lavorazione gli aveva procu-
rato a Murano gelosie tali da mettere a re-
pentaglio la sua stessa vita. Unico caso in
deroga al decreto del 1291, il consiglio
dei Dieci gli concesse di trasferire la pro-
pria fornace nella città di Venezia.
L’opera di Briati, con le sue “ciocche ma-
gnifiche da illuminare le sale de’ gran si-
gnori, i teatri e le vie in occasione di so-
lennità”, ridiede momentaneamente respi-
ro alla produzione lagunare del vetro che
da tempo andava scemando, illudendo i
veneziani che potesse assurgere nuova-
mente agli onori del passato. Ma il clima
di immobilismo sociale e politico che ca-
ratterizzò gli ultimi anni della Serenissima,
unito alla crisi economica della prima metà
del 1800 decretarono la stasi delle glorie
artistiche vetrarie di Venezia.
Dall’antico
il miracolo della rinascita
La produzione dell’inizio del XIX secolo de-
linea un livello di qualità decisamente scar-
so, con poche eccezioni.
Nel 1847 le fornaci attive erano solo una
dozzina e l’unico settore che non faceva
registrare una crisi di rilievo era quello del-
le conterie. La lavorazione degli smalti in
pani, delle varietà di perle e margherite
conosciute come perle di Venezia, le con-
terie appunto, era tradizionalmente sepa-
rata dal resto delle lavorazioni e solo all’i-
18
Tazza in calcedonio, XVII - XVIII secolo
Murano, Museo Vetrario
Cup in calcedonia glass, XVII - XVIII century
Murano, Glass Museum
