Venetian arts and crafts

In a few days the climax of the Venetian Carnival will be reached. Guests from all over the world will wear their shimmering costumes, hide their face behind a mask and attend a [...]

“How many tiles do you think they used?” My client was looking up at the golden dome of St Mark’s church in Venice. The mosaics were glittering at their best, shining with all their faceted [...]

When I was a child, I loved going to the school library and wandering around the white metal bookshelves. I loved the Einaudi editions. They had a white cover and a beautiful red line around. I [...]

Katharine Hepburn’s eyes stare with pleasure and happiness: a ruby red glass goblet stands by the window in a shop in Venice, in the beautiful campo San Barnaba. The film is “Summertime” by David [...]

Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all? A symbol for self acknowledgement better than any selfie, a symbol for the deformation of reality, a means to connect to a magical [...]

Almost 30 years ago, in 1988, the Società Veneziana delle Conterie e Cristallerie (the Venetian company of Glass beads and Crystal) stopped its activity. Recently its abandoned space was [...]

While everybody knows that Murano glass is synonym for luxury, are we all aware that it could even be used as money? We are not talking about vases, chandeliers, mirrors or goblets though. We are [...]

Foulard, I love this word and its sound. When I was a child, my mum kept her foulards in her bedroom, carefully folded in the fancy rococo chest of drawers. There was one of them that I cannot [...]

Not too far from Giovanna Zanella’s shoe workshop there’s a nicely named bridge: the bridge of the “bareteri” to recall when in its sorroundings the “barete” [...]

One day, while preaching in Egypt, the patron of Venice St Mark had quite a major problem if you need to walk: the strap of his shoe fell off. He then met a cobbler and asked him if he could [...]