Museo del Vetro

Glass Museum

MURRINO GLASS, from Altino to Murano

Project

Glass Museum, Murano
From June 16th 2012 al January 6th 2013

EXTENDED to January 27th 2013

This exhibition, held in two venues – the Museo Archeologico di Altino and the Murano Glass Murano – focuses on the ancient art of murrina glass from the Veneto, from Roman times to the present day in Murano.

The museum of Altino will display some Roman glass items made using this special technique. These articles come not only from digs in the archaeological site of Altino, but also from other archaeological sites under the jurisdiction of the Soprintendenza Archeologica del Veneto, which almost corresponds to that of the antique X Regio Venetia et Istria, which boasted excellent commercial and cultural ties with the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean, the home of the art of making glass. Some of the articles made with murrina glass are almost wholly intact, while others have been restored and others yet are merely fragments. All, however, are of great academic interest.

The Glass Museum will instead be presenting works of murrina glass made in Murano since the 19th century; it was the Murano glassmakers who revived this antique method after long study of the archaeological material present in the museum at Murano and in other important archaeological collections, such as in the Museo Nazionale di Napoli.

The murrina glass made by the 19th-century masters of Murano gained its first extraordinary success at the Exposition Universelle of Paris in 1878. Between the end of the 19th and start of the 20th century, the Murano glassmakers developed the technique further, with exceptional results, as in the case of the works made by Vittorio Zecchin and Teodoro Wolf-Ferrari, displayed at the Biennale of 1914. And in more recent times, some of the best murrina glass of Murano has been designed by noted artists and designers, including Carlo Scarpa and Riccardo Licata.

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Co-production by the Museo Archeologico di Altino and the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici del Veneto
Curator: Rosa Barovier Mentasti