A Murano glassblower dips a long metal blowpipe, the ferro sbuso, into an oven running at about 1,200C and draws out a gather of molten glass. Then the work is in the hands. The maker keeps the rod turning without pause, now and then blowing down its length to swell the glowing blob. From that start the island’s masters, the maestri, make chandeliers, vases and prancing glass horses.

A glassblower in a Murano glass factory turns molten glass on a pipe in front of the furnace.
Image: Wknight94 more
Glassblowing demonstration at a Murano glass factory in Venezia .Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0

The heat is the first obstacle. Glass needs up to 1,600C to be worked in the kiln, the BBC reports. The second is weight, because a mass of molten glass is heavy to lift and turn.

A trade passed from father to son

Murano has made glass for some 700 years. The Republic of Venice moved every furnace and its workers to the island in the late 1200s, partly to keep fire away from the city. Families held the furnaces for generations, and sons inherited them along with the trade secrets. Boys began as young as nine, first sweeping floors and then training for years towards the rank of master.

Women stayed outside the hot shop. They did lampwork, melting glass in a torch flame, and strung beads for jewellery, according to Rosa Barovier Mentasti, a historian of Venetian glass. She says the records name one woman who ran her own furnace: Marietta Barovier, in 15th-century Venice. Barovier’s own bead design, the perla a rosetta, is still in production.

Strength was the usual excuse. Giovanna Moretti, from a family of glassmakers, told Apollo that tradition kept women out as firmly as the heat did. Men did not want a woman giving them orders at work, she said.

Who is at the furnace now

In 2020 Agnese Tegon, then 26, was the only Venetian woman working in Murano’s furnaces, Apollo reported. Her first break was an internship of ten eight-hour days, laying gold leaf on 2,500 glass coins. She went on to work with the glass master Giancarlo Signoretto.

Chiara Lee Taiarol founded El Cocal Glass Studio in January 2021, after ten years working with glass in the United States. The BBC calls it Murano’s first furnace owned by women. Its co-owner, Mariana Oliboni, had never stood in a furnace until Taiarol asked her to join. A year later she was making objects of her own.

The team works to techno-punk, turned up loud.