Filament glass

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In murrine (Reticella) is an art glass are melted in the colored glasses in transparent or white glass threads. These are designed into patterns by deforming and twisting the still hot mass.

history

Mesh glass à la façon de Venise, Rheingau Wine Museum , 17th century
Fazzoletto vase (Fulvio Bianconi for Venini, Venice 1949)

A preliminary stage of this technique, the millefiori glass , was already known in antiquity. Thin, colorful threads were wrapped in a spiral around the vessel and worked up and down to create zigzag patterns or waves. Late Roman prunted occasionally have in addition to the prunts also such thread pattern. A significant find is in the Archaeological Museum Colombischlössle issued Millefiorischale from the Roman camp Dangstetten .

Filament glass in the narrower sense, in which the entire glass body is covered by thin, melted threads, was first detected in Venetian glassblowers in the early 16th century (Italian millefiōri ). If white milk glass threads (Italian latticini ) are melted down, one also speaks of latticinio glass or, because of its finely elaborated, filigree processing, also of vetro a filigrana . As glass à la façon de Venise , thread glasses were also produced in glassworks north of the Alps in the late 16th and 17th centuries, for example in Tyrol , Germany, the Netherlands and Flanders.

A refinement of the filament glass is the so-called net glass , also tip glass ; here a second one with opposed milk glass threads was inserted into a cut glass bubble. The result was an effect like a lace pattern (Italian : reticella ).

There was a baroque adaptation of the mesh glass technique around 1745 to 1770 in English glassworks, which they used in particular to decorate the shafts of long-stemmed wine glasses and brought them to a heyday. Foot and cuppa these goblets or cups were usually made of simple clear glass. The association of the stem decoration with a piece of net-like gauze ( petty net ) earned this type of glass the name Petinet glass . It was also produced to a lesser extent in North German and Dutch glassworks. Since the glassworks have not yet signed, the exact provenance often cannot be determined.

The historicism of the 19th century revitalized the thread and mesh glass in Venetian style. This happens north of the Alps, before its place of origin Murano itself follows in the second half of the 19th century with the establishment of the Società Salviati & Co. (1866) and their successors. The Josephinenhütte in Bohemia and the Rheinische Glashütten-Actien-Gesellschaft in Ehrenfeld near Cöln are early examples of the rediscovery of this technique à la façon de Venise . There have also been colored versions since the 19th century.

Art Nouveau glass art partially adheres to the historical technique of melting colored glass threads as a decorative element, but without creating an area-wide thread or net pattern. Such vessels, for example by Loetz Witwe ( Klostermühle , Bohemia) do not count towards the thread glass in the narrower sense.

A special Venetian form of thread and mesh glass after 1945 is the so-called fazzoletto glass (Italian for “handkerchief”). Vases and bowls are blown into such a bizarre shape that they look like a crumpled lace handkerchief. The first designs of this kind come from Fulvio Bianconi , who mainly worked for the Venini glass manufacture in the 1950s. Bianconi and his successors offer this "handkerchief" shape, but also smooth ( i.e. without the reticella technique) and, on the other hand, numerous multicolored thread and mesh glass variations in traditional, conservative shapes (bottles, vases, goblets, glasses).

literature