- Art
The Venice Glass Week Festival, the Celebration of Glassmaking Art in Venice
Exploring the Art of Glassmaking in Venice and the Influential role of Murano and Mestre
Venice is made of the same substance as glass: quintessence of its industriousness, its fragility and ability to achieve excellence, Murano glass represents the city in the world.
A handful of sand, silica, soda, ancient materials that are shaped with the energy of fire and a lot of hard work of master glassmakers.
The Venice Glass Week celebrates and supports the masters that through their craft have made the glassmaking the “art of fire”.
The seventh edition of the Festival will take place from 9 to 17 September 2023 in Venice, Murano and Mestre
Participants range from artists and glass masters to prestigious museums and institutions, private collectors, historic furnaces, cutting-edge design studios, innovative art schools, emerging or illustrious authors and designers.
A lively miscellany of experiences on show.
The millenary Venetian tradition, the magical act of transforming a handful of sand into precious glass, forged by fire, by the breath that shapes and makes it shine in a thousand colours, is today valued as a very high art expression, a symbol of Italian excellence.
Discover the masterpieces of glassmaker Davide Salvadore at the Caffè Florian’s captivating exhibition.
Caffè Florian, genius loci for innovative and artistic ferments of the city, has always had a particular attention to art and design as evidenced by the permanent art collections and signature souvenirs.
In past editions of glass exibitions it has hosted, to name just a few, Silvano Rubino, Lucio Bubacco, Massimo Nordio, the Dei Rossi (father and son), Fabio Fornasier, Ercole Moretti and international artists such as Richard Marquis, Yoichi Ohira, Toots Zinsky, Oskar Kogoj.
On the occasion of Venice Glass Week 2023 it hosts “Il vetro si fa musica”.
Discover the masterpieces of glassmaker Davide Salvadore at the Caffè Florian’s captivating exhibition from September 9th to October 15th.
His glass sculptures will be exhibited in the Room of Seasons by Stefano Stipitivich, Art Director of Caffè Florian.
His glass sculptures are the expression of a musical approach to glass, they pulse with an endemic rhythm, convey a vision of life that has the warmth and the colors of Africa. Design and pure craftsmanship: from his works transpires the strenght of the artistic gesture and the ethereal beauty of the light captured in the glass. Glass becomes music and brings to the Florian the joy of colors and musical instruments that speak of ancient sensibility and a new vision of art.
The timeless Craftmanship of Davide Salvadore: A Legacy of Master Glassmakers in Murano
Descended from a family that has been working glass since the seventeenth century, he knows all the stages of glass processing having learned the trade since childhood: from setting up a furnace to setting up an art exhibition.
Davide Salvadore began producing glass beads by lamp work at his mother’s jewelry workshop, Anna Mantoan. This gave him the opportunity to work with fashion and design brands such as Roberta Di Camerino, Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Dior, Swatch.
In 2012, he founded “studiosalvadore”, where he is supported by his sons Mattia and Marco.
In his studio, Davide Salvadore’s role is that of master glassmaker at the furnaces, set up by himself, a combination of furnace work and lampworking work.
Salvadore has collaborated with other names in Murano – Nason & Moretti, Vincenzo Nason, La Murrina – and with the Art Institute of Venice, as well as with designers such as Andrea Anastasio, Giorgio Vigna, Florys Meydam, Frank Borst, Massimo Nordio.
He is a founding member of “Centro Studio Vetro” in Murano, a non-profit organization founded in 1997 to promote and grow the art and culture of glass in Italy and abroad.
His works are part of international collections and exhibitions.
His attention to design and his artistic skills make him a unique Maestro in the art scene of glassmaking.
Venice, a crossroads of peoples and knowledge, is the heir of an ancient craftmanship that has been elevated to Art.
The use of glass dates back to the third millennium BC. From the Phoenician art, through the Egyptian one, to the Roman and then the Byzantine art, Venice has been in a continuous osmotic exchange of cultures and arts that has enriched it with beauty and tools to achieve it.
Venetian glassmakers learned the use of sodium glass from the Orientals: a chemical composition that lent itself to hot working. They excelled for aesthetic sense and technical innovations related to the use of precious metals to obtain different colours.
As a proof of the existence of a glass production in the area, ancient glass finds dating back to the seventh and eighth centuries have been found on the island of Torcello, the first port for people fleeing from the barbarian invasions of the upper Adriatic.
In thirteenth century, the “Capitulare Bylaws of Venice” decreed to concentrate the production on the island of Murano. The risk of fires in the furnaces was very high and it was necessary to preserve Venice from fire hazard.
This isolation made it possible to jealously conceal all knowledge in glass techniques. All the secret chemical combinations that made the island an industrial centre of luxury glass in Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
To protect the Murano heritage, the import of glass from abroad, the arrival of masters from outside and above all the exit of the masters from the Republic of Venice were prohibited: penalty could have been imprisonment or even death!
In 1441 a guild statute was drawn up, “Mariegola dell’Arte dei verieri de Muran”, which regulated all phases of the activity, from manufacture to sale of the glass items.
The strenght of an island that had to import from elsewhere all the material such as vitrifying silicon, dark soda and even wood to light the furnace’s fire, has always been the human factor: mastery and craftsmanship of the inhabitants that created the fulcrum of an artistic production unmatched for centuries.
At the end of the Republic of San Marco in 1797, the rebirth of glass craftsmanship took place in the second half of the nineteenth century when Murano developed new techniques bringing production to a higher level, creating the contemporary glassware and design.
This new artistic turning point leads famous brands to move part of the production on the mainland to perpetrate the tradition in techniques, being more competitive and connected to the world.
The Guide to the Festival Program and Event
The Venice Glass Week is the international Festival, born in 2017, that the city of Venice dedicates to glass art, an artistic and economic activity for which the lagoon city has been known all over the world for over 1,000 years.
The seventh edition of the festival will be held from 9 to 17 September 2023.
The Venice Glass Week is promoted and organized by the City of Venice, Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Le Stanze del Vetro – Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti and Consorzio Promovetro Murano.
For more information, visit The Venice Glass Week
