Description of the Technique Process of decoration consisting of voluntarily creating gaseous bubbles in a volume of glass. Bubbles are generally considered an imperfection or sign of impurity, and are often characteristic of antique glass. However they can be deliberately produced, either by controlling the temperature of fusion to obtain flawed glass, or by using various different procedures depending on the desired effect. Particles of soda can be deposited between layers of glass to form inclusions of carbonic gas; the bubbles, irregular in shape, are sometimes stretched by blowing. One can also use a pointed mold that leaves low spots on the first gather where air bubbles become trapped under a second gather. These bubbles, therefore, are evenly spaced.

Emile Gallé, consummate expert on all the technical possibilities of glass, describes this process in his subtle “Talking Glassworks” with the words “The rain in the pool is making bubbles”. Maurice Marinot, famous Art Deco glass master, was very partial to flawed glass and the art of making bubbles, which he carried to extremely sophisticated lengths with, for example, his “bullage or” (golden bubbles) called Caviar. Numerous glass artists at that time followed his lead, like the Daum brothers in their 1920’s production of bubble glass encased interposed painting, or their simple transparent bubble glass of 1940. Also in France one should site Jean Sala, Henri Navarre, Georges Dumoulin and Andre Thuret. In Italy we should mention, during the same years, Carlo Scarpa and his cased glass with “bollicine” and metal leaf, but above all Napoleone Martinuzzi with his original and “impossible to confuse” creations for Venini and Co. made of glass called “pulegoso”, a medium rendered opaque by the quantity of little bubbles, or “puleghe” it contains.