This project explores the ancient art of glass blowing on the island of Murano in Venice, Italy, as a craft that both reveals and conceals the political control exerted over it in the 13th century. Rooted in research and investigation of the seemingly vague history of glassblowing during this period, I have created a glass-blown object that highlights the cultural history of this art and reveals how glass is not always an object of transparency, but also a physical barrier that distorts the truth. The final product sheds light on the overlapping of political interests and geographical exploitation, resulting in the physical isolation of cultural secrets.

Venice and Murano have been renowned for their centuries-long historical legacy of glassblowing mastery. With its history and cultural heritage closely intertwined with traditions and knowledge of the glassblowing craft, the small island of Murano conceals its ties to historical secrecy and borders. Glassmaking is believed to have existed for thousands of years, with the earliest evidence found in Syria between 27 BC and 14 AD, and in Palestine in the first century. The first Venetian glassmakers imitated them and imported raw materials to produce their own. By the year 1000, glassmaking was already flourishing in Venice and began to be regulated by guild-specific statutes called mariegole. In 1271, a law stated that no one could practice glassmaking without swearing loyalty to the State. Strict prohibitions on glassmakers’ expatriation were also enacted: those who left Venice and returned were required to pay a penalty to protect the craft’s secrets. In 1291, Doge Tiepolo decreed the relocation of furnaces from Venice to Murano. The measure had a dual purpose: to prevent fires and to preserve the exclusivity of glassmaking knowledge within the Republic of Venice.

The confinement of glassmakers to the island of Murano produced a geographical, economic and political border, facilitated by the lagoon’s natural water barrier. The geography thus becomes a politico-natural infrastructure, a medium of separation over a cultural aspect. The main glass blown object of this period in Venice, called the inghistiera, or angastaria, is born from techniques brought from Syria and Palestine through colonial extractive practices, and therefore becomes a symbol of the paradox: the unequal coexistence of artistic capacities and political leverage and containment.

My aim is to shed light on the “opacity” of this time and question who benefits from such borders. Using glassblowing as my method to work with glass in a way that speaks to borders, the process itself becomes a critical reflection on inherited infrastructures. My act of making, rather than representing, is a critical refusal not of the art form itself, but of its glorified and apparent linear history.