Mauro Vianello

With these words Joel Arthur Rosenthal described the works that I had the privilege and pleasure to perform for the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, during the exhibition Il Vetro a Lume held in 2016 at the Museo del Vetro. The exhibition had great appeal both because of the peculiarities of the works on display, entirely executed using the lampwork technique, and because, for the first time in the history of the Murano Glass Museum, the exhibition was entirely dedicated to a contemporary local craftsman.

For those who don't know me yet, let me introduce myself: I am Mauro, a glass artisan, specialised in the creation of sea creatures. I am often asked why I made this choice, and the most frequent answer is that living in Venice has made it really easy for me to fall in love with the marine world. I was born in Murano, a small island in the Venice lagoon famous for its long tradition of glassmaking, and I grew up spending most of my time sailing around the lagoon on my boat. All this time spent in close contact with water and the nature of this particular ecosystem led me to become fascinated by marine life and its creatures.

The cultural environment I grew up in certainly influenced my choices, but there were also other reasons that pushed me in this direction, such as my curiosity about marine biology. Above ground, on Earth, it is difficult to see an animal with bright colours such as yellow or red. In the marine world, on the other hand, you can see yellow, red or orange seahorses, fluorescent jellyfish, colourful anemones and fish with a thousand shapes and colours. What fascinated me most about the inhabitants of the sea was the vibrancy and variety of their colours.

Glass immediately struck me as the perfect material for reproducing these fantastic creatures, as you can accurately replicate both the brilliance of the water on your skin, the fluidity of the shapes, and the wide range of colours, in all their brightness. This is possible thanks to my trusted supplier Effetre Murano, a well-known local company that offers a wide variety of colours in the form of coloured glass rods, but also thanks to my inexhaustible desire to experiment, which often leads me to create new colours for my creations. In fact, starting with the glass rods I have bought and mixing the colours, I can produce new glass rods with the colour that best suits my needs.

Photo by courtesy of Marco Santin

In addition, my admiration for Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka and their modus operandi also played a major role in my training. Their extremely faithful glass reproductions of nature fascinated me so much that I became a zealous 'student' of these 19th century artists.

My courses and demonstrations have been hosted by events, schools and private ateliers in Italy, Turkey, Holland, Russia, France, Australia, USA, China and at well-known museums and universities such as the the Lorenzo de' Medici Institute, the Pittsburgh Glass Center. You can also see my own instructor profile at the Corning museum of glass

Many experts, colleagues and friends call me a master, which is very flattering, but I don't feel I can call myself one yet, because you can never say you have learned everything there is to learn, especially when trying to reproduce nature. I am still studying the best techniques of lampwork and I am constantly refining my creations to make them more and more similar to how they appear in reality. All this takes place in my studio, located in the historic centre of Venice, where I give life to my creations and where I hold various courses aimed both at those who want to learn lampworking techniques and at those who already have experience in the field but want to study my approach to this ancient discipline.