This month’s Marker is extra special! It is made from pieces of millefiori glass. Here is an excerpt taken from GlassofVenice.com and it gives some history of this beautiful glass.
“In the sixteenth century some of the Murano glass artisans started attempts to imitate the beautiful ancient glassware created by Romans. They were successful in doing that, but as with many other glassmaking techniques, the secret they uncovered had subsequently been lost again until the interest in these Roman pieces sparked anew in the second half of the nineteenth century. At that time Murano glass artists became fascinated with glassware from classic antiquity created by the ancient Romans and exhibited in the famous Murano Glass Museum. Some of the amazing objects that came to us from those times included glass vases, bowls, urns, and plates with flower or abstract patterns spread around the inside and outside surfaces of the objects.
Venetian glass artisans understood conceptually that these items have been created using glass rods shaped in various patterns and then cut up and fused together. However, it was not so easy to work out a precise technique for creating these types of glassware, for this required persistent and passionate research by trial and error. This was just what a man named Vincenzo Moretti did. At first, he worked as a glass-paste mixer at one of the most prominent Murano glass companies of that time, Salviati & Co., which then turned into Venice and Murano Company. He spent countless hours and finally uncovered a secret to producing Millefiori glass, which instantly made Venice and Murano Company world-famous thanks to the works they showcased in Paris Universal Exposition in 1878.
Vincenzo Moretti not only learnt how to achieve the beauty of Millefiori patterns, he also managed to create exact copies of the amazing glassware produced by the Ancient Romans and used in Pompeii and in other Roman cities that was on display in world-famous Archeological Museum of Naples.”
This is fascinating to me and I am truly honored to be able to work in this ancient art form. The glass I use is Italian Moretti glass but using millefiori is something I have just started using.
In the 1950’s, my father spent some time in Italy while he was in the military. He brought back a necklace of millefiori beads for my mother. When I started working with glass, my mother gave me the strand of beads. They need to be restrung but I just love looking at them!
So here it is 2022 and I am making a millefiori stitch marker! These will each be totally different from each other, making each truly one of a kind!