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.

Or if the artisans of the City of Water and the Island of Glass seem to be aging more slowly than the world beyond?

Orsola Rosso is nine years old. She lives on Murano, but has not yet worked with glass…

garzone—an apprentice training to work in glass.

This was Maria Barovier, daughter of Angelo, sister of Maestro Giovanni.

Glass families were not unfriendly, but they didn’t share their spaces, their work, their secrets.

The Doge of Venice even granted Maria Barovier permission to set up her own small furnace and produce the special bead she had created. A woman tending her own furnace: this was something new. It was unlikely to happen again unless the world changed substantially.

Maria Barovier never acknowledged the girl, but sometimes she glanced at her sideways. You are Orsola Rosso and I know you are there, the look seemed to suggest.

The maestro was in the center of a dance, the conductor orchestrating everything going on around him. There was a smooth rhythm to it; there had to be, or the piece would not turn out right. He seldom spoke other than the odd short command.

What exactly did he say when he didn’t place more orders?” “He said he was grateful that we had managed to complete the orders on time, and that he would see how these pieces fared with the usual customers.” “ ‘These pieces’? Is that what he said?” “Sì.” “That means they’re different from previous work. He’s comparing them to your father’s, and they’re not as good. Klingenberg knows his glass. All the glass in the world passes through Venice, and he has seen most of it. I’ll talk to him, find out what the flaws are.

Once you know, you can decide if the faults can be corrected. Come back in three days.”

Three days later Stefano opened the workshop door to Orsola and stood aside, his eyes following her; she could feel his gaze on her back like a stick poking her.

They must take the time to work out what they can make well, rather than follow what your father made.

Your father’s servente Paolo makes excellent work. He’ll show them, though in the end he won’t lead them, for he’s not a Rosso. But they must work it out quickly, before they lose Klingenberg’s goodwill. He will fill his orders with others’ work before long.”

The King of Spain ordered beads for his ships going west from there.” “West?” Orsola was used to hearing of ships going east, to Constantinople and Alexandria and Acre, or west as far as Spain. There was nothing west of Spain. “They’re looking for a new route to Asia that way. My rosette accompanied them.” Maria looked mildly satisfied at this triumph.

There are plenty of sales to be had from simple beads. They’re not the only answer to your family’s problem. But they are one answer.”

Symmetry is crucial with beads, as with most things made with glass. As you Rossos must know.”

It was like juggling three objects of different shapes and weights.

It didn’t help that Elena was not accustomed to teaching. She didn’t explain important things, she assumed knowledge, she quickly grew impatient. When you already know how to do something, it can be hard to put yourself in the shoes of someone who doesn’t.

“And each color—and whether it’s transparent or translucent or opaque—responds differently to heat,” Elena continued, “and you have to learn how to work with two responses at once. Then when you add a third or fourth color, you need to know how to add it without ruining what you’ve already got, because each time you heat it in the flame, it changes. And all the colors look orange when they’re hot, so you must remember what is what. But you won’t be doing anything complicated for a long time. First you must learn to control molten glass on the rod. Do you have any honey at home? Transparent and runny, not opaque.”

Orsola nodded. She too had no intention of entering a convent, as so many spare women did. She had no intention of being spare.

How have we come to be ruled by a young tyrant? Orsola thought. But she knew: her parents had not reined in Marco but let him have his way and believe he was right in all things. Perhaps they’d thought he would mature in time, settle down and discover the value of humility. But Lorenzo Rosso had died too early, and Marco was expected to take charge without having learned that important lesson. Now Klingenberg would have embarrassed him at the meeting, and he would take it out on the rest of them.

the middleman who didn’t actually make anything, but connected buyers and sellers. He was the oil that kept the wheels of business running smoothly.

She felt as if she and her brother were being drawn deeper and deeper into a labyrinth they might never escape from.

Two hundred years before, the Doge had sent glassmakers to work solely on Murano, to isolate the fiery furnaces from the dense city and to keep track of the artisans so they wouldn’t run away to the mainland with Muranese glass secrets.

Orsola was still slightly behind the men, and the gondoliers began to stir. “Oe, che bea cocheta!” they called, and made kissing noises. They would have become more explicit, but she stepped up to join Marco and Giacomo and Antonio, and the comments cut off as if hands had been clamped over their mouths.

A humiliated Marco could be more dangerous than an angry one. Anger burned out, but humiliation could run long and deep, wrecking any chance of his ever valuing her and her work.

He hadn’t paid enough attention while his father was teaching him, but now with the studio in trouble, he took on the role of the son saving the family business and played it as if to an audience of thousands.

There are no women in the glass business, because our work must be perfect to be accepted by men, and with glass there’s no such thing as perfection.”

After the afternoon months ago when she’d met him, she had indulged herself in recalling every detail of that afternoon with him in Venice: what he had said, what she had said, how he had looked at her. For a time, going over it in her mind reignited the thrumming in her body. Eventually, though, such raking over made the few memories of Antonio and that day stale from overuse, the juice squeezed from them.

That sudden passage of time: What does it matter, one century or another, as long as Orsola is accompanied by those she loves and those she needs and even those she hates? If they sail through the years with her, she can skip alongside the stone to the important moments, without worrying about who and what has been left behind.

It is easy to dream when you hear nothing.

The stream of people spat her out in front of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, and it was a relief to land somewhere familiar.

As had been the case the previous summer, it seemed the plague would remain in Venice and leave them alone. Its presence was like a fly trapped in a curtain and making a muffled buzz but never emerging into the open.

Orsola made her beads for Klingenberg and stockpiled them for when things got better. Time passed in its unpredictable way. Then the fly trapped in the curtain found its way out into the room.

Then the fly that had been circling the room landed in full sight on the Rosso table. The plague had arrived.

they all reached greedily for the tiny fishes and burned their fingers, having a long, lazy dinner for the first time in what seemed like months, ignoring for one afternoon that fly in the room. Afterward, the platter demolished, they sat at ease around the table with full bellies.

Antonio seemed to belong at last, with a place at the table rather than as an outsider perched on the edge. It was a feeling that made Orsola look at him for a moment longer when he caught her eye. They smiled at each other.

“Bene, bene, he’s fine. I must get back to work.” Marco left abruptly—angry either at his wife for being ill, at God for allowing it to happen or at himself for being weak and scared.

For all his bluster, Marco knew he was going to lose; he was simply putting off the inevitable for a few moments longer.

she found herself treating her body as if it were a vase made of the thinnest glass, likely to break if jarred.

She was grateful for the presence of Paolo and her brothers, but already she felt she needed fresh contact, the way a pond needs the flow of fresh water to keep it from stagnating.

Like the tide, he came close and then slid away.

“Make enough to keep us fed.” He didn’t thank her or praise her, but it was enough that he had agreed.

“Have others fallen ill? Or been quarantined?” Orsola felt as if she were on a boat floating away and throwing out a rope for him to catch and pull her toward shore.

For the first time she found Marco’s firmness a strength rather than a weakness.

But it was better than simply sitting.

The Vianello cousins were more like fishhooks, sharp and glittery—productive when on your side, deadly when not.

It was like that for some: coming out of quarantine was almost harder than being in it. When locked in, there were few decisions to make: all you could do was to wait and keep yourself alive in the meantime. Once out, suddenly there was freedom, and with it, choices.

and the Vianellos had taken her brothers to bed to entertain them—then