VENETIAN GLASS

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 87, 22 January 1938, Page 7

VENETIAN GLASS

LOVELY OLD INDUSTRY Very old is Venice’s tradition for producing lovely, delicate household adornments in glass. To the Island of Murano came the Venetian ladies of long ago to choose chandeliers, mirrors, goblets and dishes for their palaces. They drew their rich cloaks about them against the breeze as their gondolas cut across the narrow channel dividing the glass-mak-ers’ island from the rest of Venice. • They liked both chandeliers and. mirrors to be decorated with fragile coloured flowers, as though massed bpuquets were to spring from the ceilings and walls of their salons. They chose shallow glass bowls to serve fruit in—bowls with handles formed like dolphins’ heads or writhing fish. But they were restricted as to colours, for only three were known until recent glass history. They were Venetian red, deep green and a sort of mottled cream, in addition to clear glass, of course. Tourists’ Choice. Nowadays, fashions in colour and form have changed. In the great showrooms where some of the finest modern glass is on view, women tourists off the cruise ships wander, entranced, past entire luncheon and dinner sets of pale rose, aquamarine, delicate powder-blue . . . The manager of Venice’s most famous concern says that people of each country have different tastes in glassware, and he can almost tell a woman's nationality from the exhibits which please her most. French and English women like pastel shades, but are more attracted by form than colour. For them are the twisted wir.e-flagons, the flower-vases shaped like Greek urns, the fine copies of classic shapes. Germans and Czechs, on the other hand, with some Americans, prefer deeper colours, heavily gilt. Most lovely of all are the glass centrepieces for table decoration in the modern manner. I saw one deep bowl of jadegreen glass out of which sprang three creamy arum lilies. Italian women “fall for” the glass sprays of jasmine, pearl-white against grey-green leaves, set on a round table mirror. But most popular for the English market, I am told, are the delicate woven baskets containing marvellously fashioned sprays of lily-of-the-valley, less exotic than jasmine, but more at home upon an English dinner-table.

Millinery Tip. Bows and arrows are to the fore in millinery. The bows are of velvet or fur on felt hats, while the arrows are very long quills plucked into the required shape and arranged so that they appear to pierce a narrow brim or tall crown.