Tues., 7/28/15 – Venice – Murano and Burano
This morning Julia took the four of us to the Venetian islands of Murano and Burano. Murano is famous for glassblowing and Burano is known for its brightly colored houses. The Ferro-Lazzarini Company paid for a water taxi to bring us over to Murano and to their showroom and shop. The water taxi picked us up at the back of our hotel and took us out the north end of the canal and across the lagoon on a 25-minute bumpy ride. We entered the factory, along with a cruise ship group, to watch a master glassblower create a vase and then a horse from glass. For the vase he started with white sand from a furnace, blew it into a small ball, then rolled it in some colorful glass beads, and then heated, blew, and shaped the glass into a fancy and colorful vase. Then he used a glob of glass and stretched and picked at it until it became a stallion. It takes an apprentice at least 10 years to learn to make the Ferro-Lazzarini glass pieces and most of them are following their fathers or grandfathers into the trade. We walked through the show rooms of exhibits, one-of-a-kind sculptures and into the chandeliers, pitchers and glasses, bowls, and vases. The colors come from glass beads cut from colorful tubes of glass or from chemicals mixed into the white sand. Their crystal pieces are hand carved or etched. After the tour, we walked along the Murano canal and looked at glass pieces in the many shops.
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