Miniature Masterpieces: Mosaic Glass 1838-1924
by: Giovanni Sarpellon
1995, Prestel-Verlag, Munich and New York
192 pages, $65. hardbound.
flyleaf: “192 pages with 1084 illustrations, 1073 in full color. Mosaic glass, the history of which began over three thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, flourished in Rome and Alexandria in the two centuries around the birth of Christ. This volume is devoted to the revival of the technique in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by glassmakers on the Venetian island of Murano. By carefully studying the ancient specimens known to them, and by adapting the techniques to glass beadmaking that had been employed for centuries in their glassworks, the Muranese glassmakers mastered the highly complex procedures involved.
Giovanni Sarpellon, the leading authority on the subject and a noted collector of mosaic glass, focuses on pieces bearing figurative motifs - among them, portraits of Italian national heroes and images of local landmarks - and on the intricate process of their creation, paying particular attention to the glass rods, or “canes”, from which some objects were assembled. Painstaking archival research and careful examination of all known specimens have resulted in an account of figurative murrine - the Muranese term for any item of glass made from slices of cane containing a motif of some kind - that is well-nigh exhaustive.
First published in Italian in 1990, this book immediately became the standard work on the subject. The text is accompanied by hundreds of illustrations of canes and murrine, supplemented by diagrams and documentary photographs. This volume will delight laymen, collectors, and historians of glass alike.”
