Wednesday October 19, 2011

The three amigos went for a walk again on the waterfront. It was quite a bit warmer walking this morning than it has been, but we could see that it was going to be a cloudy day. After breakfast, we hopped on a water bus and made our way to the island of Murano. This is where all of the class factories have been located since the 1200’s. The reason that they were no longer able to be in Venice proper is that many of the structures on the island were made of wood and they were afraid of fires from the glass making. We visited one of the oldest factories on the island. At first we were given a demonstration of glass making by George, aged 76. He made a Milleflora vase – he rolled the molten glass in a tray of small multi-colored beads (see photo) and then blew and shaped the vase. It was lovely and took him only about 7 minutes! He then made a small glass horse. It was amazing how quickly he could turn and pull the glass to make the head and legs of the horse. We then went into a room where one of factory guides explained the different kinds of Murano glass to us and how they were made. It was all very interesting. We then went into the showroom and were “allowed” to make purchases if we so desired. Some of the pieces were quite lovely, but they also had lovely price tags! The sad thing is that very few of the young people today want to apprentice to become glass blower – it takes 10 years – so I am not sure what the future holds for this industry. We then went by water bus to Burano, which is famous for lace making. Here, again, most of the women making the lace were elderly. It was interesting to see as these ladies hand sew the lace instead of using bobbins (see photo). One small piece of lace may be worked on by 15 different women – each one has a specialty stitch which they complete and then the piece is passed on to another woman who adds her special stitch. Quite an amazing and tedious process. The other interesting thing about Burano is that the houses are all brightly colored. Supposedly, this was done so that the fishermen could find their houses when they came in at dusk (see photo). We had lunch on the island and then headed back to San Marco where it was raining a bit. It had been foggy for most of the day. We went back to a few of our favorite shopping spots and then went out for dinner at the same restaurant we ate at the first night. Tomorrow we will go to the Tuscany region and meet up with Susanne. Hopefully, we can publish the blogs tomorrow.