Vintage Murano Glass – What Are Its Constituents? The vintage Murano glass artwork has its roots in 1291 when, by decree of the Serenissima Republic, all the furnaces of Venice were moved to that island. From then on, as in the slow disentangling of a thread through the centuries, this activity has thrived reaching excellent creative heights and developing techniques and tools without ever betraying its identity. Behind the glass has grown a real world unique and unrepeatable, made of hands moving deftly, glances that run from the heat of the furnaces to the water used to cool the material, patience and rapidity of execution, suggestions and sayings forged by the long hours that glass masters and their assistants have spent together working shoulder to shoulder, day after day.
At the center of everything: what is the "partìa"? At the base of this magic, there is a fitting composition of elements, known as "partia", a precise combination of substances that, depending on type and dosage of each ingredient, can open to the artist or craftsman an almost unlimited range of chromatic possibilities. There are four basic constituents: Silica sand, which alone would melt at around 1750 degrees, thus making it impossible to manage at that temperature. Soda precisely used to lower the melting temperature, in a range from about 1400 degrees to make it fall further and further. Calcium carbonate, an element used to prevent the natural matting effect of soda in motion within the viscous liquid of the vitreous mass. Rinse aid, usually antimony, which is the mean of getting faster clean and erasing small impurities. To develop this basic composition - that lastly would become crystal glass - in order to obtain from the material the desired color tone come into play oxides, chemical elements one by one associated with a determined chromatic gradient.