The Glassmaker

by Tracy Chevalier

People who make things also have an ambiguous relationship with time. Painters, writers, wood-carvers, knitters, weavers and, yes, glassmakers: creators often enter an absorbed state that psychologists call flow, in which hours pass without their noticing. Readers, too.

Venetians complained about their city becoming a theme park, but Orsola knew that as long as Venice’s canals stank of sewage, its rooms were dark and damp, its people melancholy and sardonic, it would maintain its true nature, which was so seductive. A pearl needs grit to be beautiful; beauty comes from the scar on the lip, the gap in the teeth, the crooked eyebrow.