The art of glass

A bit of humor from Peggy Guggenheim

This morning we woke up to rain! We had decided to visit the island of Murano, so thought we might look at a couple of churches before committing ourselves to that trip. Luckily the rain petered out as we rode the Vaporetto from the station near our hotel to St Alvise, one of the church’s on our pass. We were too early, so we waited until it opened at 10:30. This is a medieval church with a trompe l'oeil ceiling (how did they do that?) and paintings on every wall.

We took the vaporetto to the next stop where we looked at another church, Madonna del Orto. It was a former monastery with a cloister and quite plain. The church was closed but we walked in the cloister and looked at the art exhibit of sculptures by Nic Fiddian-Green. He sculpts horses, mainly the head of a horse standing on his nose!

We finally got on the vaporetto to Murano and got off at the Colonna stop. We walked by countless shops featuring all kinds of glass items - clocks, vases, jewelry, paper weights, cups, glasses, plates, and figurines, We had our tickets for the glass museum, but it was a long walk to get there - almost to the other side of the island. There are several canals dividing up the island and vaporetto stops which we could have used to avoid the walking. Oh, well, I guess we need the exercise!

The museum is in an old palazzo, so had interesting paintings and ceilings. We watched several movies on different techniques of glass making and learned a lot. The displays of glass from the first efforts of the Romans to modern art glass from the 1970s were just lovely. It is unbelievable what beautiful objects can be made from glass. Even a useful cup or glass can be quite decorative.

Can you see the dragons?

We were so lucky that the rain stopped for us and didn’t start until we were on our way back to the hotel.