Stemmed Filigrana Wineglass (Tazza)

The graceful and refined proportions of this stemmed wineglass make it one of the more elegant late sixteenth-century designs from the Venetian island of Murano. The glassblower has decorated the stem and bowl of this vessel using canes of opaque white glass blown into complex patterns.

The decoration, known as vetro a fili and vetro a retorti, revolutionized the appearance of Venetian glass when it was perfected in the mid-1500s; it quickly won the admiration of a wealthy international clientele. By 1540 the techniques were clearly understood, and one glassblower wrote that both "large things, as well as small, [were made] of white and colored glass�that seem to be woven of �twigs equally spaced with the greatest uniformity and exactness."