Perfume

139
Perfume Flask with Silver Stopper
Venice; 17th c.

It is clearly an attempt to imitate some semi-precious or precious stone which could be best achieved by using aventurine glass as produced at the end of the 16th c. and especially in the 17th and 18th cc. It was discovered and first used by the Miotto family, one of the most famous among Murano glassworking families, first mentioned in 1542. A piece of copper was added to the molten glass which produced a glass similar to brown aventurine quartz sprinkled with mica or some other mineral. The flask shimmers as if "gold" dust were powdered all over the surface.