Sunday, July 28, 2013

2,967℉ in the Shade: Murano Glass Artisan


Venice is presently in the suffocating grip of a heat wave, but when I find myself thinking about how miserably hot it is at my desk I remind myself of the glass blower in the photo above, one of Maestro Giorgio Giuman's three sons at Fornace Linea Arianna, whose main workstation is beside a 1,147℃ (or 2,967℉) furnace. To keep hydrated in such conditions he and his brothers each drink 6 liters of water (just over 1.5 gallons) per workday.

Linea Arianna is the furnace that produced artist Judi Harvest's glass designs for her exhibition "DENATURED: Honeybees + Murano", currently on display at the Scuola dei Battioro e Tiraoro beside the church of San Stae. That show, and Linea Arianna, will be the subject of my next post.


5 comments:

  1. Oh, it's a real pity the posts that require a more extensive reading and a higher level of attention stay without comments.

    It's the same in my LiveJournal - the post about a Munchen beer experience gets dozens of comments while photos from Kunstkammer in Vienna is hardly visited.

    I just got back from 2 weeks in Europe and post every day. And there are no surprises - discussion of food and drinks starts exchange of opinions, photos from museums cause yawns.

    I can only imagine the situation at Facebook and Twitter...

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    1. I've generally been lucky enough to be surprised by which posts get looked at a lot or even commented on. I've put up certain text-heavy posts with a single pic that I fear won't interest anyone, only to get a larger-than-expected response, and then put up other posts I expect to be obviously popular that turn out to inspire hardly any response at all. As much as I might hope that people will like what I post, it seems a luxury to me to be able to not have to worry about response--in contrast to, say, running a bookstore in which one must fret every day about sales.

      But, yes, I suppose it's no surprise that beer in Munchen would outstrip art on pretty much any day...

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  3. I had chance to visit few furnaces last summer in July. It was a very nice experience but at the same time I felt sorry for the master glasses working in such hot conditions for 8 hours a day!! I was literally melting during my 20min visit. They told me that luckily they normally shut down the furnace in August because of the high temperatures!

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    1. Working in such conditions really requires a certain kind of endurance, I'd think. I suppose one can acclimate oneself to it, but I'm with you, I don't personally know how they do it--even with the 1.5 gallons of water each of them drink each day to stay hydrated.

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