On The Road After Dark

On the Road: Week of Feb 1  (5 am)
Albatrossity – Winter in Flyover Country #3
cope – The Great Shearing, 1978
🐾BillinGlendaleCA – The Observatory, the Sign, and a City
way2blue – Graniti, Sicily
Origuy – Moscow Metro Stations

On the Road: After Dark: Week of Feb 1  (10 pm)
One more week in Venice with randy khan!

🌺  And now, back to randy khan!

randy khan

Today’s photos are mostly from the main island, and there’s no glass.

Venice, ItalyMay 23, 2015

It seems right to start with a bridge.  By now you can see how much variety there is in them.

On The Road – randy khan – Venice and Environs, Part 5Post + Comments (8)

randy khan

These photos are from the first of two side trips – this one to Ravenna.  You go to Ravenna for mosaics, and it’s worth a special trip.  These photos are from four sites, all within walking distance of each other.

Ravenna, ItalyMay 25, 2015

The first stop was the Baptistery of Neon, built towards the end of the 5^th century C.E.  Appropriately, this scene in the dome is John the Baptist baptizing Jesus.

On The Road – randy khan – Venice and Environs, Part 4Post + Comments (24)

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Back to Murano, and more glass.  I told you it was a glass trip.

Murano, Venice, ItalyMay 22, 2015

This and the next photo are from the studio of Lucio Bubacco.  He’s another flameworker, one of the best in the world.  This is a chandelier – think about how much work there is to produce something this big with this much detail.

On The Road – randy khan – Venice and Environs, Part 3Post + Comments (29)

randy khan

Today’s going to be all glass, and actually all one piece of glass.  On our second day in Venice, we watched a demonstration by Davide Salvadore and his team.  Glassblowing almost always is a team effort, and everyone has a part.  The studio was pretty small, our group was incredibly close – close enough to feel the heat – and my wife and I were in the front row.

Murano, Venice, ItalyMay 22, 2015

This sequence picks up after the preliminary parts were done.  The first thing they did was dip the pipe you see here into a furnace that was filled with molten clear glass to pick up the glass on the pipe in what’s called a gather.  They blew a bubble through the pipe, shaped the glass into cylinder, and cooled it somewhat.  (You can tell how hot glass is by the color – bright orange is really hot, and it gets closer to its real color as it cools.)  Meanwhile, the little disks you see were laid out on a metal table and heated with a blow torch, because cold glass touching hot glass is a recipe for disaster.  When the gather was shaped properly and cool enough, and the disks were hot enough, Salvadore rolled the cylinder on top of the disks, and they stuck to the cylinder.

On The Road – randy khan – Venice and Environs, Part 2Post + Comments (24)

We’ll be in Venice for a couple of weeks.  Enjoy!

randy khan

My wife and I went on a glass trip to Venice in 2015.  (I guess I’ll find out soon enough if any of the other people on the trip are fellow jackals.)   Venice, particularly the island of Murano, has a centuries-long history of glassmaking, and there are lots of fabulous artists there today as well.  There will be a fair amount of glass, but except for one day I promise other things as well, including two excursions outside of Venice that were real highlights of the trip.

Venice, ItalyMay 21, 2015

Welcome to Venice!  You arrive by boat or, in our case, by plane then car then boat.  We started the trip on Murano, and then moved to Venice proper later.  So the first slides are from Murano.

On The Road – randy khan – Venice and Environs, Part 1Post + Comments (25)