Murano Glass Platter

January 22, 2025

My parents and I didn’t vacation much growing up, aside from visiting family in Arkansas and Mississippi. In 2018, we decided to take a trip together to Rome during my Thanksgiving break. My dad is a history buff, my mom loves pasta, and I was down for the art: it was the perfect destination for us as a family.

I picked up this Venetian glass platter (even though I was in Rome lol) while I was there. I had never seen a collage of different glass molded together into a cohesive object like this, and I thought it was beautiful.

I love glass. The transmutation of sand, something almost liquid in its behavior, and brown in color, can transform into a hard, see through substance is just so cool. But my favorite aspect outside of its materiality is that the see through quality of it allows for the content to be focused on, rather than the material. It’s an invisible, visible material.

I have a glass dining table and glasses for this reason. You can focus on the food, or the beverages inside (as a green tea addict). What is compelling to me about the platter is that the glass itself is the content, and because of the nature of the material, shining light through it only further emphasizes its qualities.

This type of recursive quality, of how the material lends itself to the content, and the content is the material, is something I’m also really attracted to in my art practice. That, coupled with the collage of the various glasses, reminds me that attraction is just mostly inherent in the individual. I make collages as my practice, it makes sense I would like other collages too.