A Classical Interlude

 So this will be the last selection of images from Venice for a while, although I will be going back there in a few weeks time so no doubt I will have lots more from my next trip that I will eventually want to share with you. But before I move onto a different location I hope you  will enjoy this selection.

The first image is of a statue of the renaissance composer Balassandre Galuppi who was born on the island of Burano in 1706 and this statue stands in a Piazza named for him. He died in Venice in 1785 aged 78. If you click here you can listen to some of his piano sonatas while you read through the rest of this post and maybe have it on in the background while you do some work or surfing etc.

While Burano is famous for lace making its neighbouring island is famous for the production of glass. The second image shows one of the  any craftsmen who work in the workshops creating beautiful ornaments and glassware. An interesting fact is the sand used in glass production in Murano is imported from the region of France near to Fontainebleau as it has the right mineral qualities.

The other images are of scenes around Venice, including the Grand Canal as well as some of the smaller canals. These were all shot during the evening and the effect of the setting sun on the stonework is quite magical. As this light is reflected on the surface of the smaller canals, where there is less traffic and therefore it is calmer, lots of interesting patterns emerge.

I have been lucky enough to visit this city several times now (in Summer and Winter) and I am very excited to be returning, this time in spring when I hope that I will discover something new.

Marco Polo

Could this be a winner?

That's not for me to say but this is the image that has been selected for the Williamson Gallery Open Exhibition 2019.  I was disappointed that the image I shared yesterday wasn't selected as well but I think this was definitely the better of the two images and I am really really happy with this. 

It is yet another of my Reflections of Venice series and I have titled this picture Marco Polo because it is a reflection of the exterior signage to the Margo Polo glass works on Murano.

I love the random shapes, the loops and whorls, I love the green of the water and I love the writing that draws you in. 

I hope that you love this image as much as I do and I hope that it is well received by the judges and visitors to the exhibition, please leave a comment and let me know what you think.

More Reflections Of Venice

This is another of my reflections of Venice, I was sat on a jetty on the island of Murano looking across to the city of Venice and this reflection caught my eye. The bright afternoon sun lit up the posts supporting the jetty and created this lovely pattern in the rippling surface of the lagoon.

With a lot of the pictures in this series it isn't immediately obvious that you are looking at reflections or that it's water, but here there's no doubt. As with the others though each time you look you can see something different. In this one I can see a Seahorse, at least an abstract representation of one although that maybe because I love seahorses and i may be "programmed" in some way to spot them.

A Lotta Bottle

Today's images are cropped from some pictures I shot of a magnificent glass sculpture of a Christmas tree in Murano which is famous for its glassware.

However although it was a fabulous structure I think it looks better as an abstract image.

Craftsmen At Work

It is always fascinating to see real craftsmen at work and so when we visited Murano on one of our days in Venice we made a point of visiting one of the many glass workshops where we watched one of the artisans at work.

In the first image you can see the molten glass glowing orange, it was around 1200 degrees celcius and it was almost magical as we saw it transformed from a glowing lump into a delicate bowl and in the next image as a long necked vase was created.

The sand had been extracted from a quarry in Fontainbleu (France) and had been heated overnight to become a pliable liquid and then in the hands of a skilled artist it was blown and twisted into so many different objects. We watched as in less than a minute he crafted a prancing horse. His colleague explained that it may only have taken 30 seconds to make, but it had taken 30 years to master the skill.

Walking back to get the vaporetto back to the main island we passed another workshop where we spotted the guy in the final image. There was a large crowd of people gathered around the entrance all watching intently but even with such a large audience he was totally absorbed in the task at hand.