This type of glass, one of the most fascinating of Antiquity, gave rise to a production of polychromatic pieces using a technique whereby sections or segments of glass cane, assembled cold, are fused together. The name mosaic glass came much later, coined by the XIXth century glassmakers of Murano. The execution of this technique requires several successive steps. The first consists of pulling cane and then slicing it into little pieces. Those slices, of varying color and design, are then placed on a ceramic support; to make a bowl they would be arranged in a circular pattern. The ensemble is then fired in a kiln creating a homogenous disk. After this step of fusion comes the slumping phase, during which the disk is placed on a form or mold that prefigures the object’s final shape -- in the case of a bowl a hemispheric form would be used. The fused unit is then fired again until, by bending, it attains its definitive shape. Often the piece would be polished inside and out to achieve its final luster.

In the third century BCE mosaic glass was widely practiced by both Greek and Roman glassmakers, but its origins go back much further to the Mesopotamian civilization. The most common shapes have been hemispheric cups and bowls, beautiful examples of which can be found in the Murano Glass Museum; but there also exist masterfully executed vases of more elaborate shape like the specimen in the Victoria and Albert Museum. This style of glass was reintroduced at the end of the XIXth century by the Venetian glassmaker Vincenzo Moretti as part of a movement to revisit ancient glass techniques. Later on, the seductive, aesthetic and plastic possibilities of mosaic glass would find followers in the painter Teodoro Wolff Ferrari and his colleague Vittorio Zecchin, giving rise to intensely colorful decorative plaques, plates and vases presented at the Venice Biannual of 1914 by Artisti Barovier. In the 1930’s it was the painter Guido Bin’s turn to rediscover the tradition, creating pieces in more pastel tones for Salviati and Co.. Since its rebirth, mosaic glass has never been completely lost from view in Venice, nor the rest of the glass world.

It is the Australian artist Klaus Moje who must be recognized for the advances he has made since 1975 with this ancient technique. He has accelerated the evolution of mosaic glass by fusing, slumping and etching Bullseye glass of bright contrasting colors. A follower of the Canberra school Giles Bettison makes his own murrine from thin sheets of glass and completes the stage of fused mosaics with blowing -- an exceptional procedure that Bullseye glass affords.

LIEFKES Reino, “Glass”, Victoria and Albert Museum, Londres, 1997 TAIT Hugh, TATTON-BROWN Veronica, “Five Thousand Years of Glass”, British museum Press,Londres,1991 KLEIN Dan, “Artists in Glass”, Beazley Mitchell, Londres, 2001