A Goblet in the Venetian Manner, Late Sixteenth to Mid-Seventeenth Century
A blown glass goblet in the Metropolitan Museum, catalogued as probably façon de Venise — northern European or Venetian. That the museum cannot say which is the whole problem the Murano guild spent two centuries trying to prevent.
Venice moved its furnaces to Murano in 1291 and then spent generations keeping the glassmakers there. Masters held privileges no other artisan had: their daughters could marry patricians, their sons inherited the trade, and the guild governed the island's furnaces almost as a small state. The other side of that bargain was that leaving was treated as betrayal. By 1600 the technique was being worked in Antwerp, London and Bohemia anyway, which is why a piece like this can no longer be told apart. See daily life inside the Murano glassmakers' guild.
CC0 — source (Wikimedia Commons). Free to reuse under the stated licence.
