Venetian Glass Beads: A Subtle Commodity

The Journal of Transcultural Studies, 2022

Few early modern materials are linked quite as closely to their site of primary production as Venetian glass. In the period between 1450 and 1650 CE, beginning with the emergence of the highly limpid and colorless vetro cristallo, glass made both in Venice and à la façon de Venise gained international acclaim, and cloaked Murano’s workshops and workers in artisanal myth. Although recent studies have examined the significance of this material for Venice and Murano, less is known about the processes through which this material became “Venetian.” This article proposes a transcultural interpretive framework that identifies and de-naturalizes this process of venezianizzazione (Venetianization) by focusing on the itineraries of the raw materials essential to the making of Venetian glass. By tracing the complex itineraries of matter such as Syrian plant ash and silica-rich stones from the Ticino river, it asks how, at which moment, and through whom such materials gained a relationship with Venice, and whether their prior uses, histories, and associations were erased in the furnaces of Murano’s workshops.

Yu. L. Shchapova International Memorial Conference , LOMONOSOV MOSCOW STATE UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF HISTORY DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY Moscow, Russia, 28–30 May 2020, 2022

Cemetery complex in Cieple from the first half of the 11 th century to the first half of the 12 th century, East Pomerania, Poland, from which the presented beads originate, is a part of settlement complex lays near Vistula River-the main water trade route. Analyzing shapes, colours, decorations of beads in the graves we can observe differences in the wealth of the people they belonged to. Original forms of beads could be a sign of the social status of the owner and the role one played in the community. Their gloss and tinting the glass mass made them an attractive, desirable element of decoration. The type of jewellery, the color and ornament had a symbolic, often apotropaic meaning what is difficult to interpret clearly today. Glass counter from male's grave has such symbolic meaning as well. Beads and other glass items were a comfortable and valued equivalent of money in the Slavic, Scandinavian and Asian territories. The location of the settlement complex in Cieple was convenient in terms of strategic position and communication. Discovered beads and other artefacts are example of imports. They are evidence of commercial and cultural contacts between communities. The multitude of functions that these small, inconspicuous objects performed indicate their value in learning various aspects of life.

2017

Blog section, "Materialized Identities. Objects, Affects and Effects in Early Modern Culture. 1450-1750" project website (<https://www.materializedidentities.com/>); July 14th, 2017. <https://www.materializedidentities.com/single-post/2017/07/14/Matters-of-Colour-Glass-Objects-in-a-Rainbow-of-Shades-in-Renaissance-Venice>

Beads, 2021

The Venetian glass bead industry has its roots in the Late Middle Ages. The development of Atlantic trade and, particularly, the slave trade from the second half of the 17th century increased the demand for glass beads. The 18th century would be the heyday of this industry, when Venetian beads attained a significant global diffusion. While scholars have long known the global exports of beads from Venice, this paper contributes new quantitative data on their precise routes and markets in the 18th century, toward the Orient and toward the Atlantic. Using beads as a case study, this paper shows how a niche product allowed a Mediterranean city such as Venice to stay connected with the Atlantic world and how the Atlantic slave trade influenced Venetian glass bead exports to the West.

BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers, 2021

The Venetian glass bead industry has its roots in the Late Middle Ages. The development of Atlantic trade and, particularly, the slave trade from the second half of the 17th century increased the demand for glass beads. The 18th century would be the heyday of this industry, when Venetian beads attained a significant global diffusion. While scholars have long known the global exports of beads from Venice, this paper contributes new quantitative data on their precise routes and markets in the 18th century, toward the Orient and toward the Atlantic. Using beads as a case study, this paper shows how a niche product allowed a Mediterranean city such as Venice to stay connected with the Atlantic world and how the Atlantic slave trade influenced Venetian glass bead exports to the West.

European Journal of Archaeology, 2021

Excavations in the Roman villa of Aiano yielded twenty glass beads, a pendant, and a glass-recycling furnace, originally interpreted as a bead workshop. This article reassesses the evidence of bead making in light of new data obtained thanks to recent progress in archaeological glass studies. A detailed study of the typology, technology, and chemical composition of the beads clearly excludes local production. Instead, two different forming techniques, four different base glasses (Roman, HIMT, Foy 2.1 and Foy 2.1/HIMT), and numerous colouring and opacifying materials point to a well-established and extensive network of the Roman bead trade, in which Aiano evidently participated. The majority of the beads can be related to the monumentalization of the villa in the fourth to fifth century AD and represent a sample of the ornaments worn by its inhabitants.

Materialized Identities in Early Modern Culture, 1450-1750, 2021

Since the Renaissance, glass has been associated with Venice like no other material. It represents a local industry and its international prestige. While research has mostly focused on high-end products, this chapter takes a broader approach. It illuminates the entire spectrum of glass production and its significance for the economy and trade of Renaissance Venice. It investigates how glass as a material affected the society of Renaissance Venice. In general, the low price of glass made it in general affordable to growing social groups and its distinct malleability allowed them to participate in the formal and aesthetic ideals of the Renaissance. Given the industry's economic and trading importance, glass was ubiquitous in Venice; diverse professional and social groups were engaged in it, generated a shared sense for the material and developed a nuanced lexicon that was used in social, cultural, and religious debates. In material, pictorial as well as literary form glass and its material features served to establish affective regimes that served to navigate through an increasing material world and contemporarily shape a community's identity.

Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 2020

Migration-period glass beads from Italy are an overlooked source of evidence. This investigation discusses the provenance, economic value and social significance of glass beads from the cemetery of Campo Marchione, northern Italy (c.570 to the end of the seventh century AD). The different chemical compositions and specific forming technologies have identified European, Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Asian specimens. The wider contextualization of the beads in association with other grave goods and the sex and age of the deceased has yielded important insights into the economic, social and cultural significance beads held in Italy, acting as markers of long-distance exchange.

UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository of the University of Amsterdam), 2018

Art History, 2017

An elaborate brass wine-cup in the collection of Victoria and Albert Museum, London (plate 1) exemplifies the analytic complexities this essay will explore: incised and inlaid with silver in the Levantine manner known as damascening and marked with the coat of arms of the Priuli family of Venice, the cup is a cultural composite that challenges modern art-historical and museological classifications, specifically those based on a geography of origins. 1 The V&A's own cataloguing points to the problem at hand. Although the cup resides in the European galleries, the museum's on-line description lists place of origin as 'Syria (possibly, made); Damascus, Syria (probably, decorated); Egypt (possibly, made)', while also speculating that the cup was likely fabricated in the Middle East, the foot in Venice, and the whole sent to Syria for decoration in a single workshop. 2 Such geographic contortions are not unique to the Priuli wine-cup. Many objects associated with the affluent mercantile culture of early modern Venice are fusions-whether literal or conceptual-that inhibit a clear identification of origins, and this is particularly true of damascened brassware. For as the Venetian market for Levantine pieces flourished in the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, local craftsmen laboured hard to duplicate prized imports and take their share of the profits. 3 The resulting objects 'demonstrate a deliberate attempt to emulate Levantine originals in design and technique'. 4 Like the composite winecup, these imitative wares have complicated subsequent scholarship, and many socalled 'Veneto-Saracenic' objects continue to defy association with a particular site of production. 5 This circumstance frustrates curators and other scholars for whom an object's site of production is a critical, even the most vital piece of historical data. It also stymies discussion that, guided by the powerful geographical model underlying much museological and art-historical work, is not easily turned away from the tired, often fruitless question of origins. 6 Since their emergence in the late eighteenth century, in step and in partnership with the formation of modern nation states, art museums have favoured classification by point of production, a paradigm that went hand in hand with much historical scholarship. 7 But unless new technical information about many 'Veneto-Saracenic' objects comes to light, the question of origins will never be resolved. 8 More important, the fact that many of the objects under consideration here regularly refuse to position themselves within fixed geographical frames suggests the limits of this dominant interpretative paradigm. 9 Thus this study-eschewing the place-specific model of museum-based connoisseurship that depends on situating an object in a given, geographically designated gallery or pinpointing origins on a map; Detail of lidded bowl, 1500-50 (plate 4).