Murano glass crisis

murano glass crisis

The glass-making district is on the point of collapse The numbers of sales have been plummeting exponentially since the second half of 2007. The union reports that 300 of its 800 members in the island’s artisan glass-making workforce have been laid off.
Their centuries-old workshops sell intricate curlicues of glass fantasy to the smartest shops in the world. But now the winds of crisis howling through the world are rattling the doors of the glass blowers of Murano.
Many orders are on hold, layoffs are rising and some furnaces are cold in a downturn symptomatic of the woes of manufacturers both small and large in Italy, Europe's fourth biggest economy. Even before the crisis bit last year, the Venetian island was slammed by a strong euro that chased away free-spending Americans and others and by competition from Chinese and other producers
Murano’s glass industry has been written off many times in the past and today it is a fragile anachronism in a place that has become almost completely dependent on tourism. Yet the glass blowers are quite as central to Venice’s identity as the gondoliers.

michele borzoni

murano glass crisis

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