My Silver Gems

I was browsing the net to find a fashionable amber necklace to match my recently purchased dress.  Finding this site was exciting because of the huge variety of jewelries from handmade jewelries, chic murano sets to elegant silver jewelries, I’ve never seen as many choices as the ones I found here.

What is more fun is that I get to buy not just the necklace that I was looking for, but also other kinds of jewelries to match my other pieces of clothing because of the affordability of these products.

Murano’s reputation as a centre for glassmaking was born when the Venetian Republic, fearing fire and destruction to the city’s mostly wood buildings, ordered glassmakers to move their foundries to Murano in 1291. Murano glass is still interwoven with Venetian glass.

Murano’s glassmakers were soon the island’s most prominent citizens. By the 14th century, glassmakers were allowed to wear swords, enjoyed immunity from prosecution by the Venetian state and found their daughters married into Venice’s most affluent families. However glassmakers were not allowed to leave the Republic. Many craftsmen took this risk and set up glass furnaces in surrounding cities and as far afield as England and the Netherlands.

Murano’s glassmakers held a monopoly on quality glassmaking for centuries, developing or refining many technologies including crystalline glass, enamelled glass (smalto), glass with threads of gold (aventurine), multicoloured glass (millefiori), glass (lattimo), and imitation gemstones made of glass. Today, the artisans of Murano are still employing these century-old techniques, crafting everything from contemporary art glass and glass jewellery to Murano glass chandeliers and wine stoppers.

Today, Murano is home to the Museo Vetrario or Glass Museum in the Palazzo Giustinian, which holds displays on the history of glassmaking as well as glass samples ranging from Egyptian times through the present day.

 Murano Glass was produced in great quantities in the 1950s and 1960s for export and for tourists.