The World in a Bead. The Murano Glass Museum's Collection

Book excerpt: An exciting incursion into the Murano Museum's glass bead collection, documented by over a thousand images that transmit the very material essence of every single bead, wowing and intriguing the visitor page after page. After almost a century of oblivion, the collection is the subject of new analysis as it prepares to go on display again in the museum's new halls.The collection was put together between 1861 and 1883 by Abbot Vincenzo Zanetti and is representative of 19th century Venetian and Murano production. 0This book is the result of a meticulous and passionate research project whose starting point was essays on the Museum's collections written by Abbot Zanetti for International Exhibitions or to document the discoveries that leading glassmakers had developed in the first half of the 1800s. It reconstructs the attributes and provenance of each bunch of beads and every sample card, restoring their original splendour.0.