Female Artisans

It’s just a short ferry trip from Venice to the tiny island of Murano, where the main streets are filled with showrooms selling everything from vases to chandeliers and ornate sculptures -- all made from distinctive Murano glass.

But it’s around the back alleyways that the true Murano reveals itself. It’s here, accompanied by the sound of roaring furnaces heated to over 1000 degrees centigrade (1800 F), that the teams of glass makers shape their creations. And it’s here that Italian Elena Rosso dreams one day of establishing her own foundry.

Rosso fell in love with glass the first time she attended a course in her home state of Liguria, in Italy’s north-west. Nine years ago, she decided to move to Venice just to learn from the masters on neighboring Murano.

“Working with glass is not so easy to explain because it’s a material you can’t touch with your hands,” Rosso said. “I form it while the material is a liquid, and then it turns into a solid -- it’s a sort of magic.”

No female masters

According to the consortium promoting Murano glassmakers, Promovetro, there are some 200 companies based on the island employing around 1000 people. The consortium has no reliable statistics as to how many of these are women but one thing is for sure. There has never been a female master glassmaker working in Murano.

“It’s an extremely arduous job and so it’s remained nearly exclusively male,” explained Sergio Malara from Promovetro.

“Every so often a girl turns up who tries it out but usually she doesn’t stay the distance because the sculptures can be so extremely heavy and the heat is just incredible – you need to be physically top fit,” he said.

Like working in a sauna

Thirty-five year-old Rosso, who doesn’t have an ounce of fat on her, admitted that it is hard work in furnaces. During her first couple of weeks training, she had to take painkillers just to get to sleep at night because her body hurt so much.

“At the first furnace where I worked, I had to carry a heavy pastorale - a sort of long iron spoon with a paddle on top - and it was very, very heavy,” Rosso said. She then had to put the pastorale in the furnace, which burnt at about 1,000 degrees, and stand there waiting for the glass to melt.

“It was terrible,” Rosso said with a laugh, “but I resisted and made my muscles stronger because otherwise they would have needed another person.”

But as Rosso pointed out, not all males are capable of lifting some of the bigger pieces either. It’s also possible to use lighter-weight tools rather than the more traditional equipment that at Murano hasn’t really changed since medieval times.

According to Rosso, it’s tradition that is to blame for the lack of women in Murano’s furnaces rather than lack of muscles.

“The masters are older people, and they are very traditional,” she said.

“They don’t believe that a woman can do these things. I think abroad you have more opportunity; I trained in London and there were women there working like normal. Here it is a scandal.”

Bead-making attracts more women

Elena is one of the very few females working in the island’s foundries; however, there are several more women who create traditional Murano beads.

One of them is twenty-eight year old Barbara Proverbio, who started her own company, BP, on Murano two years ago. She originally moved to Venice to study architecture, but became inspired by Murano’s artisans.

Using a technique called lampworking -- where each bead is made individually over a hot flame, Proverbio produces glass bracelets, necklaces and fantasy creations mainly for the fashion industry.

Proverbio said she wouldn’t want to work anywhere else despite Murano being "a bit closed when it comes to women" and "a bit rough", because it has a magic all of its own. For Proverbio, there is also the desire to make it in one of the world’s most famous glassmaking centers.

“The moment in which you decide to dedicate yourself to glassmaking, maybe you should dare to do it at Murano out of respect for the tradition,” she said.

Making beads isn’t as hot and sweaty as in the furnaces, but it still involves heat, burns, and wearing distinctly unsexy safety glasses. It’s also extremely fiddly work -- Proverbio can spend up to 45 minutes make a single bead.

This means she has plenty of time to think about what advice she would give those who aren’t sure about breaking gender stereotypes and working in non-traditional industries.

“There isn’t such a thing as man’s work, or woman’s work,” she said.

“I think, there is only your work -- I mean, a job that is your calling. If you love your work, then it it’s unimportant if you are male or female.