1
Sommerso
Submerged Colour
Sommerso — Italian for 'submerged' — is created by dipping a partly formed glass core into one or more layers of molten coloured glass, encasing each hue within the next like the strata of a gemstone. Because the walls are left thick and perfectly transparent, light travels deep into the piece and is refracted by the suspended layers, giving an extraordinary impression of depth, weight and movement that shifts as you turn it in the hand. The technique was brought to its modern peak on Murano in the 1930s and 1940s by designers such as Carlo Scarpa and Flavio Poli for the Seguso and Venini furnaces, who paired bold contrasting colours with pure, sculptural silhouettes. Today sommerso remains among the most collectible of all Murano techniques, prized for vases, bowls and abstract sculptures in which the colour seems to glow from somewhere deep within the glass itself.
2
Filigrana
Threads of Glass
Filigrana — from the Latin for 'thread' and 'grain' — embeds slender rods of white (lattimo) or coloured glass within a clear crystal body, arranging them so the threads form stripes, nets or fine spiralling ribbons known as zanfirico. First mastered on Murano in the sixteenth century, it is among the most demanding of all Venetian methods: the prepared canes must be laid side by side, fused, gathered and then blown while constantly turned, so the delicate pattern stretches evenly and never collapses or distorts. A close cousin, reticello, crosses two layers of spiralled canes to trap a tiny bubble of air inside each diamond of the resulting net. The effect is an airy, lace-like refinement that came to symbolise Venetian elegance itself, and it is still reserved for the finest goblets, vases and decorative pieces, where the precision of the threadwork unmistakably signals a true master's hand.
3
Millefiori
A Thousand Flowers
Millefiori — Italian for 'a thousand flowers' — builds dense, jewel-like floral patterns from cross-sections of multicoloured glass canes. Each pattern begins as a murrina: rods of coloured glass are bundled, fused and drawn out into a long, thin cane that carries the design in miniature along its entire length. The cane is cooled and sliced into hundreds of tiny discs, which are then arranged by hand, one by one, before being fused together and shaped into the finished object. The method has ancient origins but was revived and brought to its height on Murano in the nineteenth century, above all in the millefiori paperweight, where hundreds of individually made blossoms are suspended beneath a flawless dome of crystal-clear glass that acts as a magnifying lens. Today it is equally celebrated in beads, bowls, pendants and jewellery, every piece a unique mosaic of miniature flowers.
4
Murrina
The Patterned Cane
Murrine are the patterned cross-sections that lie at the heart of both millefiori and Venetian mosaic glass. To make one, a master layers and bundles rods of coloured glass to compose an image — a flower, a star, a geometric motif, even a portrait — then heats the bundle until soft and stretches it into a long, thin cane. Remarkably, the design is preserved in perfect miniature along the cane's whole length, so that slicing it crosswise yields disc after disc bearing the identical motif. These slices can be fused flat into panels, picked up onto a blown form, or set like tiny tesserae into a larger composition. The technique descends directly from the mosaic glass of ancient Rome and Alexandria, was lost for centuries, and was painstakingly rediscovered on Murano in the nineteenth century. The murrina remains one of the truest signatures of the island's artistry and patience.
5
Avventurina
Glass of Stars
Avventurina suspends countless microscopic crystals of metallic copper within the glass, giving it a warm, golden-brown body that glitters from within as though scattered with stars — an effect so admired that it lent its name to the gemstone aventurine it resembles. Producing it is famously unpredictable: a precise quantity of copper is melted into the batch, which must then be cooled with exact, patient slowness so the copper precipitates into tiny reflective crystals rather than dissolving invisibly or oxidising away. Too fast or too hot, and the magic is lost. For this reason the formula was a jealously guarded Murano secret for centuries, and fine avventurina has always been rare and costly. Because the material is dense and deeply coloured, it is most often used in smaller pieces — jewellery, beads, paperweights, decorative accents and inlays — where its shifting, glittering depth can be admired up close and becomes the focus of the work.
6
Battuto
The Hammered Finish
Battuto — Italian for 'beaten' — is a cold-working technique carried out after the glass has fully cooled and annealed. Using grinding wheels and abrasives, the artisan works the surface into a dense, all-over pattern of small, shallow, irregular facets, each catching the light at a slightly different angle. The result unmistakably recalls hand-hammered metal: soft and matte rather than glossy, it diffuses light across the surface instead of mirroring it, and invites the hand as much as the eye. Developed and refined on Murano in the twentieth century — notably by the Venini workshop and designers such as Carlo and Tobia Scarpa — battuto marked a deliberate move toward a more modern, sculptural and tactile sensibility, in contrast to the bright, glossy traditions that preceded it. Today it is highly prized by collectors of contemporary Venetian glass, lending vases and art objects a quiet, understated sophistication.
DISCOVER
Own a Piece of This Heritage
Every creation in our collection is shaped by these centuries-old techniques, handcrafted by master artisans on the island of Murano.
Explore the Collection
