Fine sheets of metal or “leaf” (gold or silver usually) can be used to create lavish embellishments inside the walls of a glass piece. The leaf can be etched with figurative or floral designs and sandwiched between two layers of glass, as in the ancient Roman technique of double bottomed glass or the carved double walled glass of XVIIth century Bohemia. Generally, this technique is practiced cold - at least originally as in the case of the Roman pieces. But the leaf can also be picked up hot and fused with molten glass, dispersing in the process fine particles that float in the mass of vitreous glass and generate abstract designs. This is this technique which most concern us in the context of hot glass and glassblowing. The metal leaf is placed on the marver, picked up and amalgamated into the glassblowers rolling parison, before a second gather covers and seals the leaf. The parison is then blown and the metal leaf tears into irregular, brilliantly ornate bits of gold or silver.

This ancient technique of decorating glass was already being used in Antiquity - by the Mesopotamians as well as the ancient Mediterranean civilizations - even before the invention of glassblowing. The gilded perfume bottles of the Phoenicians for example were made using the technique of core forming. After the Middle Ages during which silvering and gilding of glass were in decline, incorporating gold leaf was rediscovered in Venice during the Renaissance, where it was often used in conjunction with filigree or crackle glass. This technique has since been extremely appreciated and frequently employed by Venetian glassmakers. In France, in production typical of the 1920’s, it was put to particularly good use in certain pieces by Daum. At the same time gold leaf continued to shine in Venice, especially in Napoleone Martinuzzi’s creations for Venini. Carlo Scarpa also revisited gold leaf - among other traditional techniques - and combined it with “sommerso” in his subtle simple vases of the 1930’s. And in the 1940’s and 50’s let us not fail to mention the work of Ercole Barovier for Barovier and Toso, as well as the beautiful polychrome pieces with gold leaf by Giulio Radi for A.V.E.M.

Incorporating gold leaf is characteristic of the refined style of ornamental box blown by Japanese glass artist Kyohei Fujita. It also evokes the interstellar universe of certain works by Yann Zoritchak, like his series of “Celestial Flowers”.

TATTON-BROWN Veronica, “Five Thousand Years of Glass”, British Museum Press, Hugh Tait, Londres, 1991 BAROVIER Marina, DORIGATO Attilia, “Il vetro di Murano alle biennali 1895-1972”, Leonardo Arte, Milano,1995