23èmes Rencontres A.F.A.Verre - Communications (17 - 19 octobre 2008)

VENETIAN MOULD-BLOWN GLASSES
Rosa BAROVIER MENTASTI et Cesare MORETTI

Even if free-blowing has always been the specialty of Venetian glass-makers, since the Middle Ages they have used molds. Several “forme”, that is molds, are listed in the inventories of Murano glassworks of the fourteenth and fifteenth century. They are both dip molds, wich impart a pattern, such as ribbing or herring-bone pattern, to the parison and molds, wich give the glass object its final form, with or without decoration. The most interesting Renaissance pieces are some filigree vases and goblets of the late sixteenth century, whose shapes and decorative patterns (lions, waving ribs, umbones) are made by mold blowing.

In the second half of the fifteenth century Venetian glass-makers brought in the “mezza stampaura”, the process of making vertical solid ribs on the lower part of a blown glass by covering it with a further layer of glass and forcing it against the inner surface of a dip mold. Moreover little molds, similar to seals, were used to make a strawberry pattern or a lion-head pattern on prints applied to the surface of a glass object.

These techniques still belong to the Venetian glass tradition. Since the twentieth century molds have been also used as a part of the process to obtain “merletto” glass and regular air bubbles inside the wall of glass.

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