A CITY of enchantment, Venice is also besieged with problems. It is threatened by rising sea levels, polluted lagoons and a grim economy. And glassmaking, its most famous industry, has long been sinking along with the city.
Murano, an island near the city centre, has been home to glass factories for 700 years. But a shift in taste from elaborate, heavy glass to inexpensive, contemporary designs that go in the dishwasher has hurt local artisans. More than a third have shut up shop in the past decade. At the bottom end of the market Chinese glass now does the job more cheaply.
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Venice's Chamber of Commerce estimates that 5m visitors a year trail down Murano's Fondamenta dei Vetrai (Glassblower Street), where the shop windows are stacked with glass gondoliers and grotesque glass clowns. But the profit margin for producing these gewgaws is very small. Gas prices have soared (the glass ovens have to be fired up day and night all the year round) and some studios now find it more cost-effective to dispense altogether with manufacture. Some of Murano's glass studios are, however, turning to a new source of income: contemporary art. Across Venice this month no fewer than nine exhibitions feature contemporary artists using glass, only some of which are in this year's Biennale.
Leading this local initiative is Adriano Berengo, who has divided his Murano studio in two. One side still churns out lamp stands; the other collaborates with artists such as Thomas Schütte and Tony Cragg to create works in glass in the same way that artists collaborate with a foundry. The deal is that two editions are created at Mr Berengo's expense: one is given to the artist, who can sell it, the other Mr Berengo keeps for himself. Occasionally a third edition is made and the proceeds are split between artist and studio. Mr Berengo has just completed two glass heads by Mr Schütte, which sold to a London-based Turkish collector for €200,000 ($261,000). "Cristina's Frozen Dreams" by a Catalan sculptor, Jaume Plensa, is on sale at the studio for €100,000. The glassmaker says his contemporary-art studio has an annual turnover of €6m. It beats making glass fish for €7 a throw.
Mr Berengo founded his studio in 1989. He got the idea of working with artists by following the example of Peggy Guggenheim who reportedly said, "Glass is too important a material to be left in the hands of glass masters." It is a sentiment he has taken to heart. But rather than wait for artists to realise they want to make glass sculptures, Mr Berengo contacts them and dangles the prospect of coming to Murano to work with a glassblower. Few refuse the challenge. So far, he has worked with more than 160 artists including Cornelia Parker, Joseph Kosuth and Cai Guo-Qiang from Britain, America and China respectively.
"Artists love new toys to work with," Mr Berengo says. "What we have to do is make them think in glass." The results can be seen in "Glasstress: White Light/White Heat", an exhibition that is split between the Palazzo Franchetti and a converted studio space on Murano itself. It is a mixed bag. Some artists can indeed "think in glass". Miroslaw Balka's piece comprises a row of shutters, in wood or opaque glass, that exude a ghostly and ominous air. Francesco Gennari has gone for triangular minimalism (pictured) and Gavin Turk has subverted tradition by blowing a larger-than-life glass exhaust pipe. Others, such as Tracey Emin, have not got the hang of it at all—unless her cat is an ironic comment on the kitsch glass animals found in shop windows off San Marco.
Working with artists brings other benefits than just cash. It encourages studios to discover new techniques. The Schütte head, for example, had to be blown into a lost wax mould, and required 40 days' cooling before it was completed. When Mr Berengo was asked to create a piece that resembled green bamboo, he consulted the Venetian archives and discovered that in the 16th century glassmakers had created an effect called avventurina, which makes glass look green.
Historically it is through innovation and concentrating on quality that Murano has survived the previous challenges from other glassmaking centres. David Landau, who, with his wife Marie-Rose Kahane, was one of the founders of Le Stanze del Vetro, a glass museum which has also created a centralised archive of Murano studio designs, points out that almost every century something has altered the working pattern of Murano, starting in the 16th century when the rival Dutch glass industry made a leap forward by learning how to make glass for telescopes.
Mr Landau is convinced that the only way forward for Murano is to raise standards. Le Stanze del Vetro, which opened its new galleries on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore last September, has already made a mark. Its first show, by Carlo Scarpa, an architect who was also artistic director of the Venini Glassworks from 1932 to 1947, is travelling to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in November. It is a reminder of Murano's pre-eminence as the backlash against cheap glass gains momentum. As Mr Landau says, it could be that Murano's future lies in its history.
