How Murano became the glass capital

Discovered by the Phoenicians (or Egyptians) glass arrives in Venice and then the world

Pliny the Elder wrote that glass was discovered by the Phoenicians. According to his tale, some traders were sailing up the river Belos, in Syria. At sundown they beached their ship and prepared an oven to bake a goat. The riverbank was sandy, and they couldn't find a large stone, so they used some blocks of natron they had on board. They used them to build the oven, then they put in the goat and lit up a fire. Where the hot natron touched the sand, a bright rivulet formed and later solidified, emitting a silvery sparkle. Pliny claimed that this had taken place 2,000 years before his lifetime; considering he died in 79 B.C., calculations are easy.
The tale of the great naturalist is suggestive, but unfortunately has been disproved by archaeological excavations. Some Egyptian tombs contained toys and amulets made in glass paste, and those tombs date back to about 4,000 B.C.
No one can rule out the possibility that the Egyptians discovered glass the way Pliny attributed to Phoenicians, i.e. by chance. Fact is, it is one of the oldest discoveries in history, allowing humans to express fantasy and creativity. Egyptians, for instance, had found a way to obtain blue or green glass by adding a little cobalt or copper oxide to the fusion.
However, it was first in Rome and then in Venice that glass was used for sophisticated practical applications and industrial productions.
The potential use in everyday life of that incandescent paste obtained by the fusion of natron and sand became apparent under Emperor Augustus, when Roman glassmakers invented glassblowing, thus shaping glass in useful ways. They created vases and bottles, vials and lachrymatories. Moreover, they managed to cut, decorate and paint glass.
They invented panes which manufactured with ingenuity. In the crucible full of incandescent glass paste, they dipped an iron cylinder that became coated with a uniform layer of paste. After removing the cylinder from the crucible, this still-soft layer was cut lengthways, laid down flat and pressed with bronze cylinders to obtain a thin sheet. It wasn't too difficult to figure out how that sheet, cut in quadrangular pieces, could be adapted to windows, thus keeping dust and wind out while allowing sunlight in.
Roman craftsmen did even more. They cut the glass in horizontal strips, joining them by hooks and wrapping them around wooden cylinders: they had invented the roller shutter.
Thanks to glass, Emperor Tiberius was able to eat his beloved melons all year long. His craftsmen built some wheeled carts that were filled with soil and where melons were planted. Those mobile greenhouses were then moved to the sunniest spots. Their glass top let the sunbeams in but trapped heat. As a result, the imperial table was never without melons.
The fall of the Roman Empire and the barbaric invasions marked a decline of arts and crafts, and glassmaking was no exception. However, the rich and powerful Eastern Roman Empire survived in Byzantium (formerly Constantinople, nowadays Istanbul), and glassmaking flourished there, with increasingly sophisticated technique.
Meanwhile, a great military and mercantile power had begun its rise in Italy: the Most Serene Republic of Venice. It had a major trade hub in Byzantium, and the Aegean islands and Asia Minor formed its "dominions." Of all the commodities imported from there and sold all over Europe by Venetian traders, glass objects were the best sellers. Customers paid high prices for them, but the cost was also very high, because the Greek and Turkish craftsmen in Byzantium gave no discounts. The margin of profit for the Venetians was tiny. Venice had some good glassmakers, but their production was not up to a par with their Byzantine colleagues. So, they were back to square one. Venice looked in vain for a solution for a long time.
It came, unexpectedly, with the Fourth Crusade, when Venice sent its fleet and its most famous Doge, Enrico Dandolo, who assumed command of the expedition to Byzantium. The Venetians' reasons for joining were not only religious, but also commercial: the Eastern Emperors had been unfairly hindering Venetian trade for a while. In short, Venice had some scores to settle.
And settled they were, taking advantage of the final coat-turning by the new Emperor, Alexius, who had promised new markets as well as the reconciliation of the Eastern (Orthodox) Church with the Roman (Catholic) one, provided the Crusaders helped him overcome his enemies. The Crusaders helped him, but Alexius did not keep his promise. Thus Enrico Dandolo ordered Byzantium to be stormed and plundered, which was methodically accomplished. Venice doubled the extension of its 'dominions', brought home the four bronze horses still today adorning St. Mark's Basilica, and some master glassmakers as well.
Having secured the know-how, the Most Serene Republic proceeded to safeguard it. This was accomplished with a masterfully conceived decree, designed along the lines of 'an iron hand in a velvet glove.' Venice declared the work of glassblowers and modellers to be its exclusive property; they were forbidden to leave the city under penalty of confiscation of all property and incarceration of relatives. This is heavy enough already, but there was even more. If the glassmaker left anyway, and despite seizure of property and incarceration of family he still remained at large, "it will be the task of the Judiciary to have him located and to send an emissary to kill him."
So far, we see the iron hand. The velvet glove came with full exemption from all taxes, the privilege to be allowed to marry the daughters of the nobles, and finally the possibility to get elected to the highest offices, including that of Doge.
The Byzantine glassmakers that were brought to Venice did a bit of reasoning and decided that those conditions weren't unbearable; on the contrary, they were better than those imposed by the Eastern Emperors, who had always taken and never given anything back. They felt themselves to be citizens and entrepreneurs, and behaved accordingly.
That's when Venice moved to industrial glassmaking. In the late XIII century, it sent all glass workshops to Murano, an island isolated from the city: the official reason was to spare the city the risk of fires due to the sparks and flames that occasionally flew out of the workshops, but the real reason was to clump all production stages together, synchronizing methods and timing and therefore reducing costs. Nowadays this would be called 'Taylorism.'
Murano has been the capital of art glass ever since, but even then some astonishing accomplishments were obtained, e.g. absolutely transparent glass, and the first mirrors, so expensive that they literally cost their weight in gold. Eyeglasses were perfected there, and bull's eye windows were first developed. They were formed by discs of opalescent or iridescent glass, joined by lead: they came into fashion, and from Venice they swept Europe.
For over three centuries, the Most Serene Republic held a monopoly on glass, thanks to the Draconian decree protecting its production. It couldn't last, though, especially because the market had grown immensely and Venice alone could not satisfy demand.
A Giorgio Ballarin, a worker at Agnolo Barovier's workshop, broke the monopoly. Barovier's was the most famous workshop in Venice, producing objects of such beauty and perfection to raise the envy of King Louis XIV's powerful minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who entrusted the French Ambassador to Venice, Nicola Prunier de Saint Andrè, with the task of uncovering Barovier's secrets. Saint Andrè did a bit of intelligence and discovered the Achilles' heel of Barovier's organization: Giorgio Ballarin, extremely good but perpetually broke, frustrated in his love life because of his lame leg, paralyzed since childhood.
Convincing Ballarin was not too difficult: the Ambassador promised him money, honours, and, of course, the favours of grateful French women. We don't know whether those promises were kept, nor whether Venice sent a killer after the traitor. What we know is that glassmaking arrived in France, and quite soon also in Germany and Bohemia.
From there, the history of glass unfolded rapidly, up to the present, when the incandescent paste that amazed the Phoenicians (or the Egyptians, if you prefer) has become a constant of everyday life. We can find it everywhere, including in construction, with entire skyscraper façades are covered with it.
It's not fragile any more, either. In 1874 a French chemist, La Bastie, found a way to obtain unbreakable glass: by blowing hot steam over the hot paste and then dipping it in an oily substance. But before him, a Roman glassmaker had already managed to produce an unbreakable glass vase. He proudly presented the gift to Emperor Tiberius, and in order to prove his claim he threw the vase against a wall. Nothing happened. Rather, something very unpleasant happened to the unfortunate glassmaker: Tiberius ordered him put to death at once. "Only by shutting him up forever," commented the Emperor, "we shall prevent the disclosure of this secret. Should it become known, gold and silver would lose their worth, and become like the mud on the road".
La Bastie had it much easier.

Publication Date: 2002-03-31
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=1138