fossilfly
06-08-2011, 11:28 PM
A terrific long form article and slideshow about Murano and how the monoculture of creating glass is giving way to more tourism due to economic stresses and changes in collectors taste. Well worth a read, it takes the reader through the heyday years of the 50's and 60's through the present.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/business/global/04murano.html
MURANO, Italy — The quasi-monastic quiet of this lagoon island a short vaporetto ride from Venice has been broken intermittently in recent months by ear-splitting saws and the low grumble of heavy machinery.
A wing of a late 19th century brick factory built by the Società Veneziana Conterie e Cristallerie, once one of the largest bead and glass factories on the island of Murano, is metamorphosing into a 130-room, deluxe hotel, which is expected to open in the summer of 2012.
At the height of production in the 1920s and early 1930s, when the Conterie’s beads were wildly popular in clothing and design around the world, the factory employed as many as 1,000 people, with another 4,000 working on contract. But it shut its doors in 1992, a victim of changing tastes and a rapidly globalizing economy.
The hotel has claimed one former Conterie structure; another is to become an annex of the island’s glass museum, if funding for the project can be found.
Off a nearby canal, work is under way on another former glass factory destined to join the top-end Kempinski Hotels chain when it opens in 2013 (though construction has been stalled for some time as building permits await approval). The luxury digs — about 150 rooms and suites — are to include a sun terrace, a spa and fitness center and a ballroom, as well as meeting and convention spaces.
Another, smaller hotel in an abandoned glassworks is still on the drawing board......
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/04/business/global/04murano.html
MURANO, Italy — The quasi-monastic quiet of this lagoon island a short vaporetto ride from Venice has been broken intermittently in recent months by ear-splitting saws and the low grumble of heavy machinery.
A wing of a late 19th century brick factory built by the Società Veneziana Conterie e Cristallerie, once one of the largest bead and glass factories on the island of Murano, is metamorphosing into a 130-room, deluxe hotel, which is expected to open in the summer of 2012.
At the height of production in the 1920s and early 1930s, when the Conterie’s beads were wildly popular in clothing and design around the world, the factory employed as many as 1,000 people, with another 4,000 working on contract. But it shut its doors in 1992, a victim of changing tastes and a rapidly globalizing economy.
The hotel has claimed one former Conterie structure; another is to become an annex of the island’s glass museum, if funding for the project can be found.
Off a nearby canal, work is under way on another former glass factory destined to join the top-end Kempinski Hotels chain when it opens in 2013 (though construction has been stalled for some time as building permits await approval). The luxury digs — about 150 rooms and suites — are to include a sun terrace, a spa and fitness center and a ballroom, as well as meeting and convention spaces.
Another, smaller hotel in an abandoned glassworks is still on the drawing board......