RAISING the GLASS

When the ancient techniques of the famed Murano glassblowers traveled west in the late 20th century, it was a most vivid migration. Today Seattle is firing up its own spotlight on the free-form artistry.

- WRITTEN BY TRACEY MINKIN

WHILE SARAH Traver admits that the mist-mantled coast of the Pacific Northwest and the sun-streaked waterways of the Venetian Lagoon may not seem like soulmates on the surface, a bridge connects them, she says. A glass one.

The second-generation owner of Traver Gallery—Seattle's premier glass art exhibition space—puts one pin in her hometown. She puts the other in Murano, Italy, a tight clutch of seven linked islands that by the late 13th century had become glassmaking's shimmering fountainhead. Murano was where aventurine glass was invented; where beads, mirrors, and chandeliers traveled to far-flung palazzos and châteaus as calling cards of Venetian mastery. But the techniques themselves, Traver says, had historically been tightly guarded secrets. And the craftsmen were trained as interpreters of another's vision—even as maestros, the highest designation—but not encouraged (or even allowed) to act as fine artists.

Until Dale Chihuly came to town. Then a fledgling glass sculptor on a Fulbright Fellowship, the American artist went to work in the Murano factory Venini and was exposed to the virtuoso techniques within. The hook was set. By 1971, Chihuly had opened the Pilchuck Glass School north of Seattle, and followed this with another idea: He invited Lino Tagliapietra there to teach.