Vintage Italian Red Murano Glass Vase from Barovier & Toso, 1955

Seductive Murano glass vase with an exceptional red coloring; the particular decorative effect used by the Glass Masters takes the name of "Bullicante", and consists of trapping small air bubbles inside the glass; for this process, the molten glass is rolled on a metal plane equipped with small "prongs" so that, by imprinting a depression on the glass in the pasty state it results with "holes" that will be later "covered" with a new layer of glass. There remains, therefore, "imprisoned" an actual air bubble at each "hole." Like "submerged" glass, "bulging" glass is a process that began in the 1930s. This vase is embellished with side applications consisting of cords of shaped glass with a characteristic wavy pattern, which is called "morise" in Venetian slang; for these decorations a gold foil was placed on the part of the mixture collected from the crucible, which was then covered with a further layer of glass, at which point the Maestro performed the blowing operation, the foil broke down and dispersed in the mixture, giving rise to a gold dust effect; with this system a shining powder is created within the glass itself, which discreetly embellishes the object to be created. Then at the end of the entire blowing of the vase, the two decorations were hot-applied to the vase itself; at this point, the Master glassmaker did a quick annealing in the kiln to uniformly amalgamate all the material, and then the piece was placed in the tempering kiln where it cooled for many hours with skillful slowness and patience; then, completely free of heat, it was taken to the grinding department where expert craftsmen proceeded to polishing, finishing and finally polishing. To achieve the magnificent red coloring, compounds containing copper and gold chloride (AuCl) were added to the body of the molten glass. Since the intensity of red is given by the amount of gold that is used, this explains why artifacts of this beautiful color are much more expensive than others. The vase is the work of Ercole Barovier and was created between 1955 and 1960 in Murano in the kiln of Barovier & Toso. Barovier & Toso is a Murano glass company in Venice. The business activity of the Barovier family began in the mid-13th century and is therefore the sixth oldest family business in the world still in operation.