From decline to design
How Murano found a new direction in the 20th century.
For centuries, Murano had been synonymous with extraordinary glassmaking. Its furnaces produced objects of remarkable technical skill and beauty, while generations of craftsmen developed techniques that became inseparable from the identity of Venetian glass.
By the beginning of the 20th century, Murano was struggling to find its place in a changing world. New centres of glassmaking had emerged, tastes were shifting, and much of the island’s production remained tied to the aesthetic language of an earlier age. The extraordinary knowledge was still there. It needed a new creative direction.
That direction began to emerge in the 1920s.
A new generation of entrepreneurs brought a different approach to the furnaces. Inspired in part by the model of Parisian fashion houses working with leading creative talent, Murano’s glass companies began opening their workshops to designers, architects and artists.
The collaboration brought together two very different forms of knowledge. Designers introduced new ideas about form, colour and function. The glass masters brought generations of material expertise and an instinctive understanding of molten glass and its possibilities.
That exchange became one of the defining forces behind Murano’s 20th-century revival.
Figures such as Carlo Scarpa and Fulvio Bianconi brought contemporary design thinking into the furnaces, while glass masters and entrepreneurs including Archimede Seguso, Gino Cenedese and Paolo Venini helped shape a new chapter for the island. Historic houses including Salviati and Barovier & Toso also evolved, carrying their knowledge into a rapidly changing design landscape.
Traditional techniques became the foundation for experimentation. Forms evolved, colours shifted and familiar processes were explored in new ways. The boundaries of what could be recognised as Murano glass expanded, connecting the island’s centuries-old craft with the wider development of Italian art and design.
Perhaps this is the most interesting part of the story.
Murano found a new direction by bringing centuries of craftsmanship into conversation with contemporary design.
Knowledge accumulated over generations moved between craftsmen, designers, artists and architects. Each brought a different way of seeing and making, and the encounters between them opened new possibilities for the material.
The result was far more than a revival. Murano became a place where inherited knowledge could generate new ideas - and where some of the most remarkable glass of the 20th century would emerge.
That exchange continues to shape Murano today.
The personalities, collaborations and experiments behind it contain stories of their own. We will return to some of them here.