The island Venice exiled its own craftsmen

Here's the Murano story that changed how I look at all that beautiful glass. In 1291, Venice ordered every glass furnace moved out to the island, officially because the furnaces were a fire risk in a city built almost entirely of wood. Reasonable enough, on its own.

Then in 1295 a much stricter law arrived, banning the glassmakers themselves from ever leaving Murano, and the real motive became obvious. This was never really about fire. It was about keeping centuries of glassmaking secrets locked on one small island. A glassmaker caught trying to slip away could lose guild membership for life, be sentenced to years chained to a galley oar, or face worse still. And yet inside that gilded cage, they were treated as nobility, permitted to wear swords, protected from ordinary prosecution, their daughters free to marry into the city's grandest families. Prisoners and aristocrats, all at once.

I painted the island in watercolour and ink, that warm furnace glow against the water. There's a poster with a letter home and a postcard if you'd like one.

Shop the poster here: Murano, Venice · Travel Poster