On the island of Murano in the Venetian lagoon, among its color-coded houses and sleepy canals, magicians bend fire and freeze flames. There, artisans pull molten glass like jelly, curling it to their will into something as grand as a chandelier or as precise as a chess piece. For centuries since 800 A.C.E., the magic of glassblowing remained Venice’s best-kept secret.
At the end of the 13th century, right around the same time its native son Marco Polo was paving the Silk Road, the Venetian Republic ordered its glassblowers to the island of Murano, where they were never allowed to leave.