Venetian Techniques in Modern Form: A

Olin College of Engineering
DigitalCommons@Olin
2013 AHS Capstone Projects
AHS Capstone Projects
10-1-2013
Venetian Techniques in Modern Form: A
comparative work of the process driving my pieces
and those of the Venetian Masters
Elliott Donlon
Olin College of Engineering, Elliott.Donlon@alumni.olin.edu
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Venetian Masters" (2013). 2013 AHS Capstone Projects. Paper 25.
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Venetian Techniques in Modern Form:
A comparative work of the process driving my pieces and those of the Venetian
Masters
Keywords: Glass, flameworking, lampworking, Venetian, Murano, 3-D art
Countless 3-D art forms have persisted over the centuries such as pottery and sculpting and
evolve as the artists do. Lampworking is an interesting exception as the art remains relatively unchanged
since the Venetian masters of Murano in the 14th century first created the art form. While evidence of
glass-making has existed since about the third millennium BC 1, the fourteenth-century Venetians were
the artists that brought the material to the forefront of modern art 2. They invented many tools and
pioneered countless techniques that are still used in the art form today. Here I will discuss the
inspiration for my work and the Venetian context from which it grew.
Series 1: Murrini/Millefiori
Murrini (the plural form of Murrine) is one of the most famous techniques created on the island
of Murano in the 14th century. Murrini are small cylinders of glass with intricate patterns visible on the
flat faces of the cylinders. This technique focuses primarily on the designs in the cross-section of the
glass instead of the outside surfaces. In order to obtain the cylinders, the glass is built up layer by layer
by adding different colors to make the cross-section in a very short, thick cylinder. This piece is then
heated and pulled out into a cane and cut into the Murrini. An example of my canes and the Murrini are
shown below.
Figure 1: My exotic canes and the murrini cut from them
1
2
Tait, Hugh
Turner, Guy
These pieces can be used in larger pieces to create patterns that would otherwise not be feasible to
craft. The exposed cross-sections of the Murrini can create dazzling effects like the piece shown below:
Figure 2: Murrine Vase by David Platchen
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One cannot discuss Venetian murrini without mentioning millefiori. The millefiori, a subset of Venetian
murrini literally named “a thousand flowers,” are flower-patterned typically with bright, saturated colors.
Although these look the most outlandish to some, they create very striking patterns that I hope to
replicate.
In my pieces, I began with a simple linear pattern in blue and white. Since I aim to use these
murrini in my later pieces, I decided that a set of two inverted color canes would be a simple yet
pleasing start to the series.
Figure 3: Blue and white murrini and cane
While the previous piece is made of only two distinct layers, the next piece in the series features
a more complex pattern with three layers of three different colors dispersed throughout them. This cane
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Image Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Murrine_Foglio_-_David_Patchen.jpg
was inspired by a project in Creating Glass Beads by Jeri Warhaftig. In the project she creates murrini for
use as irises in her “eye bead”. The murrini she made in this project featured four differently colored
stripes around a core pupil. I took a slightly different take on the pattern and inverted the colors.
Directly on the blue core are four white sections alternating between the transparent blue filler and light
blue. Putting the light blue between only two of the white sections enables the blue core to stand out
more and show through the sides of the cylinder as well as the cross-section.
Figure 4: Toothpaste cane and murrini
From the sea of blue, I was challenged and inspired to attempt creating “marine murrini”. This is
especially fitting seeing as the island of Murano, where much of the Venetian glass was flame-worked,
produced many glass sea-creatures in various forms. These murrini would have cross-sections of sea
creatures, more specifically – jellyfish. In these pieces, I chose a rather subdued ivory as background
filler and encasing to make the transparent yellow of the jellyfish really pop. My first attempt was met
with reasonable success (a technical error cut off one of the jellyfish tentacles) and is shown below.
Figure 5: Left: Jellyfish murrini try 1. Right: Jellyfish murrini try 2
While the first try was neither a resounding success nor a failure, the second try looks more like a
jellyfish. The second rod was also drawn out thinner to more tightly compact the features, but was
drawn a bit thinner than I would have liked. Ideally, the cane would be between the thicknesses of the
two on the scale that I am working on.
My final pieces in the series represent my take on the Venetian millefiori. Adhering to traditional
flower colors, I chose a color scheme of opaque green as a core with yellow petals encased in light blue.
Even though the yellow and green are relatively close in hue, the high saturations of the colors allow the
flower to bloom through the cross-section. I believe this is my most successful piece of the series.
Figure 6: Millefiori in pastels with cane and cross-section
My second piece in the style of millefiori featured the three primary colors: a yellow base with
red petals encased in transparent blue. While traditional millefiori are made with opaque colors, I felt
the transparent blue could add a fourth color to the piece. When the saturated yellow base is viewed
from the side through the transparent blue we see not only the blue encasing and the yellow core, but a
green stem as well. This piece is definitely the most striking of the series.
Figure 7: Rainbow millefiori with cane
Series 2: Celestial Beads
The second main technique I have focused my work on is the technique of Venetian wound
beads. Unlike other techniques, wound beads are created individually by winding a heated glass rod
around a metal rod called a mandrel (often coated in some type of ceramic compound to aid with bead
release). In the case of the ancient glass-makers of Murano, the beads were made on iron or copper
rods coated in ashes or fine sand 4. Today, the wound beads are most commonly made on steel wire with
specially formulated ceramic bead-release. A picture of the coiling process is shown below.
Figure 8: Left to right: Glass is wound around the rod, the conplete simple wound bead, and a cross-section of the simple
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bead .
The rods can be coiled once to make a simple wound bead, or can be wound multiple times to create
larger beads. This multiple winding technique is also necessary to integrate different colors into the
pieces as color rods can be switched between coils 6. The spirally wound bead below is an example of
how larger beads can be made with small rods.
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Figure 9: Two shapes of spirally wound beads. Lines on the beads denote how the rod was coiled .
In this series, I drew the inspiration for my own glass beads from the celestial bodies of our solar
system. I remember being fascinated with pictures of the planets taken by spacecraft and telescopes
when I was younger. It wasn’t until recently that I realized that most of the pictures I’d seen were
actually artists’ renditions of what the planets probably look like based on the incredibly blurry
spectrographs the telescopes have taken. This led me to wonder that if digital artists could crate
4
W. G. N. Van Der Sleen
Image credit: W. G. N. Van Der Sleen
6
Warhaftig, Jeri
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Image credit: W. G. N. Van Der Sleen
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representations of the planets, why couldn’t I? This thought gave birth to my series of eleven celestial
bodies created as beads. Pluto, the Sun and the Moon are included in this count because Pluto is still a
planet in my mind and the Sun and Moon are simply too iconic to be left out of the series. I knew that
working within the limitations of my equipment, the wound bead technique, and my skill; I could not
create hyper-realistic renderings of the planets. I embraced this fact by creating the design for my beads
around the concept of “the abstraction of realistic” where beads would represent the feel of each body,
not look exactly like it. This gave me room to exercise my artistic freedom just as the digital artists had.
A photograph of all the beads created in this series is below:
Figure 10: From left to right: The Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth (Moon), Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto
Mercury
Mercury is the closest terrestrial planet to the
sun. Because of that, it has a raw, gritty feel to it. In
order to get this gritty, dusty feel, I used a coloring
technique called frit. In this technique the piece is rolled
in crushed up glass color when molten to fuse tiny
shards of glass into the surface. This creates the look of
rocks, or spots sometimes present in glass pieces. In this
case, I added a heavy amount of frit to try to emulate
the rocky surface. To increase contrast and emphasize
the grit, I made the piece on an ivory-colored base.
Venus
Figure 11: Mercury bead
With the second planet from the Sun, I was faced with an interesting decision. Pictures of the
planets are shown atmosphere, or without. For most of the planets, there is an iconic look that people
know the planets by which made it easy to choose between surface and atmosphere views. For Venus
that was not the case. While Venus is soft and fluffy looking in the atmospheric view, it is hot and
volcanic on the surface. Ultimately I chose the volcanic look because of the way it complemented the
series. To get the cracked, volcanic look of the planet, I used a technique called the crackle technique
which is a modern version of the Venetian “eis-glas” technique.
To create the cracks, the piece is dipped in water while entirely
molten then re-heated slightly and finished8. In pieces that are
transparent single-color, this creates visible cracks in the piece
that do not greatly hinder the structural integrity of the piece.
However, if the piece has solid color with a thin layer of color
powder (finer frit) completely covering the outside surface,
when the piece is crackled, the inner color shows through the
cracks. This can be a subtle effect if performed once, and a very
dramatic effect with large gaps if performed multiple times. I
was a bit aggressive with the heating of the piece, so I created
a giant lake of lava on the surface, but it still fits with the harsh,
volcanic feel of the planet.
Figure 12: Venus bead
Earth
Our home planet, third from our Sun was one of the more challenging designs to make. There
are thousands of maps and hyper-realistic pictures of the earth from space possibly because it is our
home. The expectation for this series is that each body will
be the abstraction of realistic which means that people
should be able to tell what the bead represents even though
the bead does not look like a photograph mapped onto a
sphere. To create this bead, I first pulled out a thin green
rod to make the land masses with. I then drew the green
land masses onto the deep blue base with the thin rod.
Once the land was on the blue base, I added a small amount
of white powder to certain parts of the piece to simulate the
clouds. Now that I see the piece cold, I realize that I could
have put a heavier dusting of white powder on, but the
piece is still quite easy to identify as Earth so it is a success.
Figure 13: Earth bead
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Rackham, Bernard
Mars
The fourth planet from the sun is most easily
identified as “The Red Planet”. Everyone has an idea that
Mars is red and dusty. Working from this idea, I worked
with the powder coloring technique to give Mars the dusty,
red look it needed. To increase contrast between the red
powder and the base, I used a black base which also fits
with the color scheme of the planet. Interestingly enough,
size is another defining feature of the celestial bodies.
People generally know large planets are compared to
others, but no one seems to know if Mars is larger or
smaller than earth. Mars is, in fact, smaller than earth
which is shown in my beads. While people may not know
this off hand, the bead helps people learn this when they
identify Mars based on its dusty, red appearance.
Figure 14: Mars bead
Jupiter
Jupiter was one of the more difficult pieces to
make mostly because of its sheer size. In glass-making, size
is limited by how much heat you can put into the bead and
how well you can control the heat. In this piece, the idea
was to paint the stratified gassy bands on the body. I
originally wanted to use different color rods to generate
the contrast in the piece, but my limited color palette did
not contain colors that matched in the right way. Because
of this, I used the non-uniformity of the individual color
rods to generate the contrast between bands. I had three
different Ivory rods that were sold as the same color, but
between batches, the rods can often be mixed slightly
differently. I was able to utilize this to create the effect I
wanted on the surface of Jupiter.
Figure 15: Jupiter bead
Saturn
The sixth planet from the sun, beyond the rings of the asteroid belt, has rings of its own. As most
know, the most defining feature of Saturn is its rings. While other planets do have visible rings, Saturn is
rarely shown without its rings. This piece presented a particular technical challenge because I was
required to put some type of representation of the rings on the planet. After much experimentation I
settled on pulling out very thin clear rods (much like I did for Earth’s land) and thin grey rods. I was then
able to wrap the thin clear around the base stacked on top of
each other, then wrap the grey rod around the clear twice to
make the rings. This technique worked quite well and gave
Saturn the rings that define it. Unfortunately, the only Saturn
that did come out broke later due to an annealing problem.
Because of this, the rings on the current version of Saturn in
the picture are mostly cracked off. I simply did not have
enough time to retry it.
Figure 16: Saturn bead
Uranus
Uranus is one of the gas giants far out in our solar system. People identify with it being colored a
light blue color, so I decided to stick with that. It also helps to add a cooler color to the rocky, volcanic
planets on the inside of the asteroid belt and the creamy,
brown gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. One interesting
thing about this planet in contrast to the others is the axis of
rotation. It is commonly known that its axis of rotation is 90
degrees off from the other planets and its axis of revolution.
Because the planet its self is tilted, it does not change the
design of the planet, but changes the mounting relative to
the other planets in the final piece. In this planet, I used a
light blue base with a slightly different light blue powder.
This allowed me to generate a little bit of contrast while still
maintaining the light blue people were familiar with.
Figure 17: Uranus bead
Neptune
Even though the Earth is known as the blue planet, Neptune
is often colored as a solid dark blue. In the outer reaches of our solar
system, things are cold, and the planets are giant. Because of that,
the feeling I was going for in Neptune was soft and dark. There are a
few white spots visible besides the dark blue, but not many. I tried to
emulate this in my bead by using a white base and heavy dark blue
powder on the surface.
Figure 18: Neptune bead
Pluto
Figure 19: Pluto bead
Currently classified as a planetoid, or dwarf planet, Pluto
holds a special place in my heart. As the farthest “planet” from the
sun it is cold, dark and icy. Actual pictures of Pluto are incredibly
blurry to the point where it just looks like a sphere. Exercising my
artistic liberty, I have created a swirly, icy rendition of Pluto in my
celestial body beads. It is an ivory base, with clear and grey
powder on top to create an icy sort of look. The clear, grey and
ivory were swirled together slightly to further enhance the effect.
The Sun
Such and iconic giant cannot be left out of this series. The sun is probably the most important
celestial body in our solar system. As far as size goes, the
Sun is the largest body in our solar system by at least an
order of magnitude. Since I can only make beads from a few
millimeters in diameter to about 2 centimeters in diameter,
I set the size of the Sun at the limit of my capability and
scaled the rest of them off of it. Aside from the sheer
enormity of the Sun, it had to be colored in the bright,
saturated yellow, red and orange people are used to seeing.
I hoped to use a yellow base with heavy orange frit on top,
but, I couldn’t get the entire mass of the sun hot enough for
the frit to stick. I did get some of the orange frit to work
with the piece and it is still the hot colors we are used to
Figure 20: Sun bead
seeing.
The Moon
Figure 21: Moon bead
Typically drawn as a crescent when observed from the
earth, the celestial body is really a sphere. Because of the
thousands of years that people have been observing the
moon, there were quite a few different representations I had
to choose from. To stick with the theme of representing them
as objects floating in space, I decided that I would make it the
dusty, crater-filled body we are familiar with. The moon is a
beautiful shape filled with dark and light grey shapes and
craters. Similar to the sun, the challenge on this bead was the
size. The only difference was that this time features were
difficult to get because the bead was so small. I managed to
get this to work with a light dusting of grey powder on a
darker grey base. In the end, this doesn’t generate as much contrast, but the method created a
successful bead.
The Series
This series was quite challenging in a number of different ways. Since I was scaling the planets to
the limits of my capability, the Sun and Jupiter were difficult to make because they were large and hard
to heat and control. The Moon and Pluto created different problems for me because they were so small.
In many cases, it was difficult to make them round because the glass tended to spread out on the
mandrel. As far as the coloring and texturing of the beads went, I really wanted to make some of the
planets like Mercury, Jupiter and Mars include a brown. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any on hand and it
takes anywhere from 1-3 weeks to get glass color. Texturing proved very interesting because it allowed
me to make my own powder to work with on my pieces and forced me to use techniques such as the
crackle technique. I also experimented with several other techniques such as trying to make craters by
spraying the bead with water instead of dipping it. Each bead took me an average of about 3 tries to
make even after I had already practiced the technique on other easier pieces. Furthermore, the
annealing problem destroyed a few of my beads. Aside from my mishaps with the technical side of
making them, I am very happy with how the beads came out. I think it is clear from the picture of all the
beads together, that the colors compliment each other; they represent the celestial bodies and look like
a solar system together.
Series 3: Jurassic Park
One of the many things Murano glass was famous for was its extremely small, fine figurines 9.
These figurines varied from flowers to animals, to people ranging from a fraction of a centimeter to a
few centimeters in size.
Figure 22: A series of glass figurines. Photo by Lucy Rendler-Kaplan
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Whitehouse, David
The glass figures have the power to create unimaginable creatures based on reality or to mimic actual
forms. Many times, the figures represent realistic creatures but have certain artistic liberties taken on
them like exaggerated features or color change like we see in the photo above. In this series, I’ve chosen
to create glass dinosaurs in the style of the Murano figurines. Like the planets, since I have limited skill
and am making half-mythical creatures I will be going for representations of the figures instead of exact
replicas of the shape. In glass-making there are two ways to make shapes. You can pull and shape
existing material, or you can add material from other rods. Adding material can be easier to work for
beginners, but adding material can create textures and lines of color where you don’t want them. For
these particular dinosaurs, I did the majority of the body-shaping by pulling material from the existing
piece, then adding material where necessary.
The Dinosaurs
In this series, I wanted to work toward a composition instead of making individual pieces. The
concept for this series was a herd of various four-legged dinosaurs chased by carnivores. I began my
series with a simple dinosaur in clear.
Figure 23: My first dinosaur: Brontosaurus
I decided to start with the brontosaurus because the body forms a graceful shape and is easy to practice
with. In this piece, I learned about pulling out the head and removing my tool-marks on the head and
neck. The legs are short and difficult to pull out. It would be much easier to add material to make legs,
but they then make unnecessary joints.
The next dinosaur was another brontosaurus – this time in green. I added eyes as an experiment
to increase the amount of expression the dinosaur had.
Figure 24: My second dinosaur. With eyes.
This dinosaur just has much better shape in general because I had more practice by the time I got a
second acceptable-looking dinosaur. I improved the leg length and shape, and crimped the chin and
base of the neck in to define the features more.
In the third dinosaur in the series, I wanted to make a fatter dinosaur with additional features.
Figure 25: The first dinosaur with ridges
Adding the ridges on the back increased the amount of character the dinosaur had. Even though the
shape is fatter and less dinosaur-like, the ridges still make it read like a dinosaur. At this point, I decided
that my herd of peaceful dinosaurs would all be brontosaurus because I wanted to use the body shape
to make the series more cohesive.
While I had made a number of brontosaurus, I still had to make the predator. From here, I
moved away from my familiar figure and moved to the tyrannosaurus.
Figure 26: The Tyrannosaurus.
The Tyrannosaurus was particularly difficult to make because of the fact that the two large feet still had
to be pulled out in order to avoid joints. It probably would have made more sense to drop them on as
separate pieces in this case, but pulling them still worked. The head and body shape is also completely
different so it took quite a few tries to form properly. The carnivore of the group is significantly larger
than the others in the group and stands almost twice as tall.
The fourth brontosaurus would be an extension of the herd with a slightly different body type
and very different color.
Figure 27: The fourth brontosaurus with improved figure and texture
This one has even further improved form and has more ridges on its back, this time in the form of
spheres. Here I decided to remove the eyes to see if the dinosaur form could speak for itself without the
face. This experiment was successful because of the ridges and the improvements I made to the shape.
A very interesting thing about this particular dinosaur is the ridges are in a transparent color. This means
that when they are viewed from the top, they appear to be the color of the body, but when viewed from
the side, they are their original color.
As my final dinosaur, I decided to make a smaller brontosaurus to create a little bit of
contrasting size in the pack.
Figure 28: The small, blue dinosaur.
This dinosaur was working as small as I could possibly go while still making definitive features. The whole
shape is more of a glob than a well-defined dinosaur because of this, but I think the size really adds a lot
to the pack as we see below.
Figure 29: Dinosaur attack! The herd of brontosaurus being chased by the Tyrannosaurus.
This is the composition I was working toward in this series. The dinosaurs tied together by shape, but
very different in color are chased by a carnivore. The different sizes and ridges really help to create
variety in the set. I do think that while there is variety, there could be a little bit less color difference
within the herd because it is currently a little distracting. Nevertheless, this series was a fun one to work
with and ended successfully.
References:
Carberry, Edward. Glassblowing: An Introduction to Artistic and Scientific Flameworking. Marshall, MN:
MGLS Pub., 1989. Print. *This book is a "textbook" designed for a quarter-long course in
lampworking. I intend to use this book as a guide to help improve my technique and enable
creation of my art.
Rackham, Bernard. "A Maiolica Plate by Giovanni Maria." The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs
56.332 (1930): 31-33+36-37. JSTOR. JSTOR-Arts and Sciences III Collection. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.
*This magazine offers a look at the works of Venetian artists through the eyes of collectors and
connoisseurs. It is also a primary source that mentions the crackle technique used on one of the
pieces being displayed.
Tait, Hugh, Glass, 5,000 years. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1991. Print. *This book provides a solid history of
the last 5000 years of glass making with information taken from: Le Musée des Beaux Arts in
France, Museo Archeological in Italy, The British Library, The Corning Museum of Glass and more.
It also provides pictures of original Venetian masterpieces.
Turner, Guy. “‘Allume Catina’ and the Aesthetics of Venetian ‘Cristallo’” JSTOR. ITHAKA, 1999. Web. 26
Feb. 2010. *This is an article published in the journal of design history by the Oxford University
Press. The Oxford University is an academic resource based in Europe. I intend to learn about the
special differences between Murano glass and other types from this article.
Warhaftig, Jeri L. Creating Glass Beads. New York: Lark Crafts, An Imprint of Sterling, 2011. Print. *This
book serves as a detailed guide on how to use many modern variations of Venetian techniques. It
provides several example projects to replicate and expand upon.
Whitehouse, David B. "Lampworked Glass Jewelry and Figures." Glass. Vol. 11. New York: Metropolitan
Museum of Art, 1993. 231-39. Print. *This work from the Metropolitan Museum of Art is an
analysis of the techniques used to create very fine Venetian figures.
W. G. N. Van Der Sleen. "Ancient Glass Beads with Special Reference to the Beads of East and Central
Africa and the Indian Ocean." The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain
and Ireland 88.2 (1958): 203-16. JSTOR. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and
Ireland. Web. 7 Nov. 2013. *This Journal article describes the origins of glass bead-making and
the various techniques used manufacture them in different cultures. While this work focuses on
the Central Africa and the Indian Ocean, it references the Venetian origins of many of the
techniques.
It's Just a Demo. Dir. Marcie Davis. Perf. Robert A. Mickelsen. Mickelsen Studios, 1998. Videocassette.
Web. *Robert Mickelsen is a professional flameworker who demonstrates his artistic technique
in this video. In the film, he creates a full-sized lampworked piece using borosilicate glass. This is
a valuable resource to improve my lampworking skill through observation.