The Corning Museum of Glass is launching a new electronic resource, The Techniques of Renaissance Venetian-Style Glassworking, by artist and scholar William Gudenrath. A follow-up to the Museum’s popular, first-ever scholarly e-resource, The Techniques of Renaissance Venetian Glassworking, which came out in 2016, this new resource presents 20 complete video reconstructions of the Venetian glassworking process.
While the first publication detailed the golden age of Venetian glassworking and its rise to prominence in the manufacture of luxury glass, the new publication follows the Venetian maestros as they fled isolation and restrictive conditions in the lagoon to set up workshops in a variety of locations across Europe—taking their masterful skills and technical prowess with them.
“The story of the spread of Venetian-style glassworking during the Renaissance is a narrative of intellectual-property loss and of bold entrepreneurship,” says Gudenrath in the publication’s introduction. “This electronic resource focuses on the idiosyncratic techniques developed by these Venetian craftsmen, newly untethered from their homeland, and explores their artistic creativity and technical innovation.”
Using detailed 360° photography, high-definition video, text and related images, Gudenrath sheds new light on 20 Venetian-style glass objects, many from The Corning Museum of Glass collection.