Watch William Gudenrath demonstrate for his Refining and Solidifying Your Techniques class at The Studio. Gudenrath's class focuses on advanced Venetian techniques: well-formed and thinly blown vessel bodies, excellent necks, delicate mereses, and blown feet and stems.

In Renaissance Europe, the compulsion to copy Venetian glassmaking styles and techniques was no simple fashion fad. The glass was clearly superior in almost every way. The glass was called “cristallo” because it was clear and colorless, a quality the Venetians achieved as early as 1440 by making it

Glass in Ancient Rome In the fourth and fifth centuries AD, the glassmakers of the Roman world were in a class of their own. Glassmaking and glassworking were separate activities. Glassmakers used tank furnaces to melt several tons of raw materials in one operation, and glass workers employed many