Shopping: Venice, Italy : Glass Act : For centuries artists have transformed sand into timeless objects

As I stand in Creazioni Artigianali Veneziane, one of two stores in Venice devoted to the work of artist Lucio Bubacco, I’m surrounded by a scene of joyful abandon. A couple dances naked except for their masks. A lavender man holds a rose in one hand and a goblet in the other. A dark purple woman proffers a tiny bird on her outstretched fingers.

What makes these sensual, exuberant figures all the more astounding is that they’re made of glass.

But, then, everything is possible in the hands of Lucio Bubacco, a rising star in the world of Venetian glass. This past spring I was drawn to the shop on Ruga Rialto, near the famous Rialto Bridge, by a window display featuring not only his animated figures but the inventive jewelry of his partner Leslie Genninger, a transplanted American who designs hand-blown beads of all shapes and sizes. They include wondrous rainbow-colored spheres ranging from tiny black glass painted with gold leaf to stunning orbs elaborately filigreed with blue, gold, green and lavender filaments.

Before my stay in Venice was over I had bought a pair of Genninger’s earrings (at $20 the perfect gift for my housesitter), as well as a small piece by Bubacco that set me back $200 but occupies a place of honor in my living room. It’s a tiny, anatomically perfect satyr, with a muscular torso fashioned from marbled mauve glass. He holds a miniature red rose in perfectly formed fingers.

The human form is central to Bubacco’s work, unusual in glass art. “I have great respect for anatomy,” said Bubacco, who spent two years studying the subject and was even commissioned to sculpt a glass spinal column for a medical convention. “Also, I love the carnival figures, dancing, drinking, joking, full of the joy of life.”

If Bubacco’s work is singularly, even eccentrically modern, it grows out of the great tradition of glassmaking that has flourished in Venice for centuries. No one is sure when the area first became known for glassmaking, but archeological digs in the Venetian Lagoon have uncovered a workshop and fragments of blown glass from the 7th Century. Historians theorize that Venice, a major seaport, attracted medieval artisans from such glass centers as Egypt, Syria and Byzantium. Documents from AD 960 mention a Venetian glassmaker (the first written record) and an 11th-Century text pictures a local glassworks. By the early 13th Century, the industry was established enough for a glassmakers’ guild to be formed--such unions being common among craftsmen of the time.

Production continues on the island of Murano--a 10-minute boat ride from Venice--as it has since 1291, when Venice’s rulers banished the industry from the city due to fire hazards from the artisans’ furnaces and a desire to maintain tight control over manufacturing secrets.

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A visit to Murano provides a unique art education, as well as many shopping possibilities, even though the work displayed may actually have been made somewhere other than in Venice. (This is why it’s important to shop carefully and patronize reputable dealers.) Here you can visit the glass furnaces and see demonstrations in which long canes of molten glass are shaped into art. The canes are the rudimentary elements and are formed by the melting together of raw materials--silica, soda and limestone--with various metal oxides used for coloring. The resulting mixture is then stretched between two blowpipes to form a colored cane that is later re-melted and blown or handworked into the desired shape.

In Murano, the streets are crammed with examples of the art, ranging from stalls full of unattractive tchotchkes to elegant multicolored chandeliers. Among the myriad stores that line the Fondamenta dei Vetrai (Embankment of the Glassmakers), my favorite is Domus, both for the quality of its selections and the expertise of its staff.

“All of the great masters are represented here,” said the salesman who led me on a tour of their collection: “Lino Tagliapietra, Archimede Seguso, Alfredo Barbini, Carlo Moretti . . . “ casually tossing off the names of these titans of the art. Walking through Domus is a crash course in Venetian glass. There are lesser known (and lower priced) artists represented as well, most of them working in the same traditional techniques as the masters.

I can spot examples of all of these time-honored methods. A delicate vase illustrates filigrana, (Italian for filigree). It’s a process in which tiny threads of colored glass are laid onto the surface of the blown glass, resulting in a lacy filigreed effect. This is my favorite of the customary forms, but I’m also drawn to the murrine : tiny bits of glass cut from different canes and melded together to form mosaic patterns, such as the millefiori (thousand flowers), so called because of the mass of colors that result. Finally, there are large pieces displaying the incalmo technique, which is the grafting of sections of distinct colors, resulting in a single piece with stripes or other patterns.

Domus offers an embarrassment of fragile riches: jaunty Moretti drinking glasses with startling angular rims; a slim Seguso vase with an aquamarine base and amber receptacle, and a delicately ornate stem; tiny translucent snifters of azure, green and lilac hues so pale as to be mere suggestions of color. It’s possible to spend $3,000 on a massive round Tagliapietra sculpture, or settle for a small dish laced with filigree of white, pink and pale blue for about $50.

I exited this Mecca of breakables, the filigreed dish tucked snugly into my backpack under a sea of bubble wrap, to wander the glass-laden streets of Murano. Though many connoisseurs disparage Murano as being overly touristed, I love the plethora of offerings available for all tastes and budgets. As I pass a host of miniature horses, a profusion of murrine earrings and pendants and baskets and bowls of inedible foods (multicolored candies and translucent grapes are the most popular), I realize that two faux antique candlesticks and a delicately etched wine glass have somehow found their way into my pack and onto my credit card.

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Back in Venice, there are more brittle riches awaiting. I generally avoid Piazza San Marco, where the goods on display are elegant but the accompanying price tags raise my blood pressure and the attitudes are less than friendly. There are two spots near the piazza, however, that I love to visit.

I must first stop in Galleria OK 4 Art, Lucio Bubacco’s more upscale outlet, where I drool over sand-cast and handworked sculptures and immense pieces of dancing figures. With prices up to several thousand dollars, they’re more suited to the budget of someone like Ivana Trump (who, the owners claim, owns several of Bubacco’s creations). For pure inventive magic, it’s my favorite spot in Venice.

Heading toward the Accademia Bridge, a five-minute walk brings me to Galleria Marina Barovier and a fascinating collection of new glass by various artists. Barovier, who has a shop around the corner featuring older pieces, has recently opened this spot devoted to more contemporary work and plans eventually to combine the two stores, creating Venice’s only major gallery featuring old and current art glass together. She is also developing a computer referencing system for the tracing of glass works, thus providing a valuable resource center for enthusiasts.

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The displays at Galleria Marina Barovier change periodically, but one artist who is always featured is Lino Tagliapietra, a giant in the modern glass world. Having looked at some of Barovier’s antique collection, I can see the classic influence on Tagliapietra’s work--techniques such as incalmo, murrine and filigrana. But there’s always a twist: a tall, slim vase has an oddly curving top or a series of peaks capping its classical perfection; colors have a warmth not usually seen in Venetian glass, with olive, orange, yellow, black and green used freely.

This is high-end stuff--at $3,000 to $6,000 per creation. So I can only afford to admire a piece such as “Hopi,” a top-heavy but perfectly balanced vase with swirls of black and green, or “Rope,” with its rough patches of purple and olive creating three-dimensional borders around tiny mirrored pieces. Barovier calls Tagliapietra “the future of the Venice tradition.” Lucio Bubacco calls him, simply, “the great, great master.”

Now it was time to cross the Grand Canal. After a 10-minute walk, I’m in the Dorsoduro district, which feels more relaxed than touristy San Marco. If I want to see more of Archimede Seguso’s work, for example, I don’t bother with the Seguso shop on the piazza but visit tiny Antichita Micheluzzi, five minutes from the famed Accademia Gallery museum. This shop is crammed with 50 years’ worth of the master’s work.

“You can get a sense,” points out owner Viretta Micheluzzi, “of the continuous production of Seguso.” The artist rose to fame in the 1930s and is still, in his mid-80s, going to his Murano workshop daily. “Here’s a piece that Seguso just finished,” she remarks, pointing to a classically elegant, deep-purple vase. “But look, it’s in the style of the ‘30s--contemporary, but not so modern.” Just as at Barovier’s gallery, the exhibits may change. On a trip last month, for example, I found the shop filled with paintings. Yet there, in a side room, were shelves laden with Seguso’s creations, awaiting me like an old friend.

Micheluzzi’s shop is, it seems, at the center of glass buyer’s paradise. The gateway starts a block earlier, at the tiny shop of Franco Dolce, a favorite among tourists that offers an occasional stunning piece, such as a blue bowl I purchased for $20.

From here to Bubacco’s Ruga Rialto store, there’s a shop every three steps. Five minutes’ walk brings me to Zagara, with a wealth of offerings in all price ranges, from swirled glass fountain pens ($10-$14) to atomizers laced with colorful filaments ($20) to an elaborately striped flagon of amber and maroon ($245). Down the block is Linea Valentina, whose brightly colored filigrana and incalmo work can be seen in many shops, but is collected here for easy browsing.

But before arriving at either of these shops, a mandatory stop is Galleria San Nicolo, located near the Ca’ Rezzonico museum and a premiere showcase for Venice’s re-emerging studio glass movement. With the predominance of the great glass factories (Venini, Barovier & Toso, Salviati) and the rising costs of Murano work space, individual studio artists have been somewhat rare in Venice. But many are now making their marks, and San Nicolo is the place to find them. One exhibit I saw (they change frequently) featured such well-known artists as Livio Seguso, Pino Signoretto and Bubacco; if you want to find the very latest in glass art, check out San Nicolo.

Yet as I look at one of Signoretto’s wild and jagged sculptures, I realize that however much these unconventional artists are expanding the form, abandoning functionality in favor of pure expression, their methods and materials have remained essentially the same; they are truly the heirs of such luminaries as Alfredo Barbini and Tagliapietra.

It’s this sense of tradition merged with originality that makes the world of Venetian glass so fascinating. Between reveling in the classic forms of the old masters and puzzling over the bizarre intriguing work of the younger generation, I found myself getting so caught up in the ongoing story of the art that I almost forgot there’s an entire beautiful city outside the fragile domains of glass.

I mentioned this one morning to Rosa Barovier Mentasi, author of the authoritative book “Venetian Glass: 1890-1990” (Arsenale Editrice, $95) and a leading expert on the subject, whom I fortuitously encountered among the prancing devils and parti-colored beads of Creazioni Artigianali Veneziane. She smiled knowingly, the light of the devotee in her eyes. “When you start with glass,” she declared, simply, “you never finish.”

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GUIDEBOOK: Venetian Art

Where to find glass shops:

* Antichita Micheluzzi, Dorsoduro 1071 (at the foot of Ponte delle Maravegie); local telephone 528-2190.

* Creazioni Artigianali Veneziane, San Polo 1077/A (on Ruga Rialto); tel. 522-5981.

* Domus, Fondamenta Vetrai 82, Murano; tel. 739-215.

* Franco Dolce, Dorsoduro, 1057/A (about 1 1/2 blocks from Galleria Accademia); no phone number available.

* Galleria OK 4 Art (Bubacco), San Marco 1845 (on Calle del Frutarol); tel. 523-9494.

* Galleria Marina Barovier, San Marco 3216 (on Salizzada San Samuele); tel. 523-6748.

* Galleria San Nicolo, Dorsoduro 2739 (on Calle del Traghetto); tel. 522-1535.

* Linea Valentina, San Polo 2091 (on Salizzada San Rocco); tel. 528-7377.

* Zagara, San Polo 2740 (at the foot of Ponte San Polo/Calle dei Saoneri); tel. 522-4796.

--R.R.