Dave Strock: Murano

Well, I finally made it to Murano.
For some reason I thought that because I work with glass and I can speak some Italian I would have a better chance of getting into some of the factories. This was unfortunately not the case. Maybe it was the time of year, or maybe its because of the economy, but most of the furnaces seemed very closed to outsiders.
Fortunately, I was able to get into Davide Salvadore's studio, and his son Marco was kind enough to arrange for me to visit a couple of other studios. Davide was still in the US when I dropped by, but I got to hang out and watch his sons do some cane rollups for a little while. They are nice guys and have a really cool studio.
One of the studios that Marco contacted for me was a chandelier factory, which was interesting to see. All of their chandeliers were constructed from many separate glass components assembled over a metal base. While I was there they were making the parts that go around the lights (not quite sure what the technical term for that is) as well as some ornamental flowers parts. There was a guy whose job was just to set up the gold leaf, and they were shredding through packs of it like it was nothing.
I also got to visit the studio of the maestro Silvano Signoretto, brother of Pino Signoretto. He was making some designs for a Belgian painter. I forget his name, but he was a really friendly guy. He was having Silvano blow some big plates with sculpted flowers attached to the faces of them. I actually got to see the technique sometimes referred to as "snorkeling" done for the first time, which is when you have an open colored tube of glass on the end of a blow pipe and you suck glass out of the furnace to make a solid core.