You can travel all over the world and see the most extraordinary works of art or the most beautiful buildings covered in intricate patterns, but you will never be able to capture all the colours and patterns of the world, lock them in a physical, tangible object and carry it around with you. Or maybe you can.
Or at least you will get the impression you can do so after seeing the exhibition "Il mondo in una perla" (The World in a Glass Pearl) at the Museo del Vetro (Glass Museum) in Murano.
This event, curated by glass pearl expert Augusto Panini and by the indefatigable Chiara Squarcina, Director of the Museum and Study Centre of the History of Fabrics and Costumes at Palazzo Mocenigo in Venice, introduces visitors to an extraordinary collection of glass pearls.
The event (through 15th April 2018) is the first public presentation (accompanied by an exhaustive catalogue) of a long and complex work: Panini studied indeed and then catalogued the collection of glass beads at the Murano Museum of Glass for almost four years.
The world of glass pearls is an extraordinary one: Venetian glass beads could be conceived indeed as miniature precious worlds, perfect and tangible results of an intangible mathematical equation that combines art, beauty and incredible techniques.
The pearls were first and foremost decorative objects: they were employed to decorate garments and accessories or to make hairpins, brooches earrings and necklaces.
As the years passed, though, the pearls acquired a financial value, they became indeed "trade beads".
Small, colourful and powerful cosmos, the pearls were exported in the 19th century to the colonies in Western Africa, India, North and South America where they were used as currency.
The production of glass beads started in Venice in the 14th century, one of the first techniques employed to make the pearls was called "a speo" (meaning in Venetian "spiedo", "spear"/"pike" in English). Artisans would put a little bit of fused glass on an iron spear and turn it on a fire to make a pierced pearl.
The technique developed further in the centuries that followed and was radically transformed when artisans started making glass canes that were then refined and cut into pearls. This technique was often employed to make simple rosary beads.
A more elaborate technique arrived on the scene from the second half of the 15th century: artisans would make multi-layered rods with star-shaped sections that were then cut into beads.
Around the 16th century the technique of the lampwork pearls ("alla lucerna" or "al lume") was rediscovered and refined: it consisted in manufacturing the pearls from huge glass canes.
The collection currently on view at the Glass Museum includes 85 folders containing an amazing amount of pearls (14,182 to be precise), plus three fabric panels from 1863 preseving 2,015 beads and several groups of threaded beads.
In 1912 the archive of glass beads made by Abbot Zanetti went lost and the studies behind this exhibition at the Murano Glass Museum have finally allowed experts to attribute once again the beads, pearls and folders to the correct glass manufacturing companies that worked in Venice and in Murano between 1820 and 1890 and to glass masters Giovanni Battista Franchini, Domenico Bussolin, Benedetto Giorgio Barbaria, Antonio Salviati, Pietro Bigaglia and Giovanni Giacomuzzi.
Among the most beautiful materials on display there are indeed the folders dedicated to the lampwork beads made by the Franchini family between 1820 and 1860 and in particular the beads made by master Giovanni Battista Franchini.
Some of these samples feature fantastically dynamic colours and shapes inside them that give the impression of being in constant movement (these beads are very aptly called "perle animate", literally "animated pearls").
The exhibition also includes the first examples of "millefiori" (thousand flowers) glass beads made between 1843 and 1845. The millefiori technique can be traced to Ancient Roman, Phoenician and Alexandrian times.
Lost in the 18th century, the technical knowledge for creating "millefiori" was revived in the 19th century.
There are obviously also a lot of Rosetta beads (first created by Marina Barovier in 1482) that feature a variable number of layers of glass in various colours.
The rosetta beads in this previously unseen collection feature up to ten layers in extraordinary shades and colours that prove the highly experimental techniques used in Venice at the time.
Murrine fans will not be disappointed as the collection also includes several examples of these type of four/six-layered pearls with their cores shaped like stylised stars or flowers.
Among the other beads featured in the displays there are the submerged pearls with a coloured nucleus surrounded by transparent glass, and the more ordinary but very famous conterie, glass beads threaded by the Venetian women called "impiraperle" or "impiraresse" from the late 1800s to the early 1900s and sold by the row.
The exhibition also includes a long section about contemporary artists who have been relaunching and recreating the art of glass beads, among them also local sisters Marina and Susanna Sent.
By seeing these rare gems with their mosaic patterns, spirals of colours or eye-shaped motifs made using secret techniques and featuring the most extraordinary chromatic combinations, you easily understand why Abbot Vincenzo Zanetti developed a passion for these beads and promoted them in the most prestigious fairs and exhibitions all over the world.
Yet, while looking at the beads neatly arranged in the cases, the most important thing to do is remembering not just their art and historical value, but also the fact that these elements used to make precious accessories or alternative jewels were also trading tools and they therefore had a powerful economical and cultural value about them (African beads were also manufactured with specific colours as required by the populations living in the colonies, and to make this point the exhibition features imitations of ancient Muslim glass beads).
As stated earlier on, "Il mondo in una perla" is accompanied by a detailed catalogue by Augusto Panini, but visitors who would like to know more about this topic should also check out the study day that the Glass Museum will be organising in March at the Scuola Abate Zanetti, located in Murano.
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