Vintage Murano Controlled Bubble Art Glass Fish Sculpture. The tall dynamic piece shows a fish with tail held high, the body shades of yellow and green with lines of controlled bubbles throughout to give the appearance of scales, and a clear rounded stand fused to the belly. 

Size: 15 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 5 in. 

The term “Murano” is most often applied to Venetian glassware made on the island of Murano near the city of Venice using a soda-lime “metal” that is typically elaborately decorated, with various “hot” glass-forming techniques, as well as gilding, enamel, or engraving. Murano was Europe’s major center for luxury glass from the High Middle Ages through the Italian Renaissance, and its location along the sea coast gave it connections with the Middle East, where glassmaking was more advanced in areas such as Syria and Egypt. Although Venetian glassmaking existed as far back as the 8th Century, it became concentrated in Murano by law beginning in 1291 for a very specific reason:  since glass factories often caught fire, this removed the possibility of a major disaster for the city. Venetian glassmakers developed secret recipes and methods for making glass, and the concentration of Venice’s glassmaking on the island of Murano enabled better control of those secrets, allowing Venice’s dominance in trade along the Mediterranean to create a wealthy merchant class with a passion for the arts. The spread of glassmaking throughout Northern Europe, as well as the occupation and dissolution of the Venetian state by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797, caused the downfall of Murano’s monopoly. Murano glassmaking began a revival in the 1920s, and today the island (along with Venice) is a major tourist attraction, full of glass factories, museums, and individual artists’ studios.

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