The flame of contemporary lampwork
- Alessandro loves glass and exploring the islands of the Venetian lagoon by boat
- He is part of the movement that is renewing an age-old glassmaking tradition
- He believes there is always scope for achieving perfection
Alessandro Boscolo was five when he first started sneaking into his father's workshop to play with glass and breathe in the smell of propane gas used for lampworking. It became the smell of home. He spent his teenage afternoons trying to model glass, and skipped school to go to a friend's furnace to experiment. When his father found out, the workbench became Alessandro's school, and he put his flair for drawing and strong manual skills to good use. From that point on Alessandro set about perfecting his lampworking technique, endlessly pitting himself against the material. After a decade devoted to mass production processes for the museum market abroad, he started his own business. Working off the flame with a palette of 350 colours, today Alessandro creates artistic glassworks in a Gothic Baroque style, which are also displayed in the Murano Glass Museum.
Interview
- How would you define the island of Murano?
- It is the Mecca of glass. It has the magic of a place without compare: Murano's glassmaking district is the world's most famous floating factory. As a glassmaker, I am immensely fortunate to have been born here, and every step I take is with the very greatest respect that the art form deserves.
- What is it about glass that appeals to you most?
- The infinite potential for creation. People used to believe that there were limits in glassmaking that could not be overcome. In fact, it is just a matter of finding the right techniques to transcend these limits. Glass is an ethereal material. When you know how to work with it, it gives you this feeling of ruling the elements, bringing the maker a step closer to omnipotence.
- What are the most complex issues you have to tackle when working glass?
- Murano glass has a very high expansion point and an uneven molecular composition. That means it is extremely unstable, difficult to work with and often bursts. Maintaining the right temperature threshold is the glassmaker's greatest worry.
- What are the basic concepts behind lampworking?
- My father Andrea and Stefano Morasso were pioneers of lampwork. Before the 1980s, glass was only blown in the furnace. But just for fun, they tried putting some glass on steel rods as a means of harnessing the lampwork technique. I develop my own technique by grafting American influences onto this family tradition.
Alessandro Boscolo is an expert artisan: he began his career in 2004
Where
Alessandro Boscolo
