BOOK REVIEW
The Glass Maker
Author: Tracey Chevalier
This is an amazing story of a glass maker and her family on the island of Murano, Italy.
This island, ‘across the Lagoon from Venice’, is still famous today for the handmade glass jewellery and other objects such as bowls, candlesticks etc that are produced there.
Orsola Rosso is the daughter of a respected Maestro – the name given to the head of the glass manufacturing family – and becomes proficient in the craft of bead making. Women were not expected to work with glass but Orsola works in silence after her father has died, to save the family from ruin.
The story “skips like a stone” through centuries and we follow Orsola through events such as war, the plague and tragedies within her family. She does, however, experiences triumphs where her beads are sold to a local Venetian merchant and adorn the gowns of empresses and courtesans.
Tracy Chevalier has researched and brilliantly presented an account of this craft and woven a story around a family who have enjoyed generations of glass making – a combination of fiction/non fiction that is truly spellbinding.
ROSALIE HOWARTH
Author: Tracey Chevalier
This is an amazing story of a glass maker and her family on the island of Murano, Italy.
This island, ‘across the Lagoon from Venice’, is still famous today for the handmade glass jewellery and other objects such as bowls, candlesticks etc that are produced there.
Orsola Rosso is the daughter of a respected Maestro – the name given to the head of the glass manufacturing family – and becomes proficient in the craft of bead making. Women were not expected to work with glass but Orsola works in silence after her father has died, to save the family from ruin.
The story “skips like a stone” through centuries and we follow Orsola through events such as war, the plague and tragedies within her family. She does, however, experiences triumphs where her beads are sold to a local Venetian merchant and adorn the gowns of empresses and courtesans.
Tracy Chevalier has researched and brilliantly presented an account of this craft and woven a story around a family who have enjoyed generations of glass making – a combination of fiction/non fiction that is truly spellbinding.
ROSALIE HOWARTH
