The Glassblower of Murano - Marina Fiorato [14]
He stood holding the arm while the final hardening took place, admiring his work, then finally stood back and wiped his brow. Although shirtless, as the maestri always worked, he still felt the burning of the furnace fires on his skin from dawn till dusk. He wondered, looking at the diligent workers around him, whether this profession were a good preparation for hellfires. What was it that Dante wrote?
`... tall flames flowed fierce,
Heating them so white hot as ever burned
Iron in the forge of any artificers.'
Corradino knew the work of the Florentine well. His father had allowed all the family to bring one possession - one most precious thing - with them from the Palazzo Manin on the night they escaped. His father had brought a precious vellum copy of Dante's Divina Commedia from his library.
That was my father's choice. It's the only book I own. It's the only thing that remains of my father.
Corradino banished the thought of him and turned back to the punishing flames.
No wonder that, back in 1291, the Grand Council of Venice had decreed that all glass-making should take place on the island of Murano, because of the constant threat of fire to the city. A blaze begun by the furnaces had more than once threatened to engulf Venice. It had been a wise idea to move the centre of production, for just a few years back the English city of London had been all but destroyed by fire. Not, mind you, that it had been started by anything as artistic as a glass foundry. The latest rumour among the merchants on the Rialto had spoken of the blaze beginning in a pie-shop. Corradino snorted.
'Tis an English trait - always thinking of the stomach.
The London fire had meant good business here on Murano. The English King Charles seemed to want to create London anew, and fill his grand modern buildings with mirrors and glasswork. There was, therefore, much demand from that chilly capital for the work of Corradino and his comrades.
Although Corradino had finished the main frame of his chandelier there was still much to do. It was growing dark, and one by one, the fire-breathing mouths of the furnaces were extinguished, doors closed, and his fellows left. He called to one of the garzoni to a last errand, and as the boy ran through the fornace, jumping over iron pipes and dodging around buckets as the men worked, Corradino smiled and thought the apprentices' nickname `scimmia di vetro' - glass monkeys - seemed particularly apt.
The boy was soon back with the box. `Eccolo Maestro!
Corradino opened the long rosewood box. Inside were 100 small square partitions, all numbered, all lined with a wad of flock wool. Corradino got to work. He took a small pontello, much smaller than his trusty blowpipe, and dipped it into the glass that lay, molten and unformed, waiting, at the bottom of his furnace. He pulled out the rod which now resembled a lit candle. Waiting a moment, he then plucked the glowing orb from the rod and began to roll the glass in his palms, and then more delicately in his fingers. When satisfied, he pulled out a string of the glass to form a teardrop, and fashioned a delicate hook on its end. He dropped the jewel he had made into the bucket of water that rested between his knees.After a long moment, he plunged his hand into the bucket and rescued the gem.
His action brought to his mind the stories of the pearl fishers of the East, stories that were brought back in the days of Venice's mastery over Constantinople, way back in the thirteenth century.
Do those boys who dive for pearls in the deep, striving for the oysters while their lungs burst, feel the same satisfaction I do? Surely, no: when they find a pearl, it is mere luck - a beneficence of nature. When their brothers in the Hartz mountains in Germany who mine for silver in the heat and dark of the hills, find a pure seam of silver, do they feel as if they have created this treasure? And you diamond miners of the