Venice is presently in the suffocating grip of a heat wave, but when I find myself thinking about how miserably hot it is at my desk I remind myself of the glass blower in the photo above, one of Maestro Giorgio Giuman's three sons at Fornace Linea Arianna, whose main workstation is beside a 1,147℃ (or 2,967℉) furnace. To keep hydrated in such conditions he and his brothers each drink 6 liters of water (just over 1.5 gallons) per workday.
Linea Arianna is the furnace that produced artist Judi Harvest's glass designs for her exhibition "DENATURED: Honeybees + Murano", currently on display at the Scuola dei Battioro e Tiraoro beside the church of San Stae. That show, and Linea Arianna, will be the subject of my next post.
Oh, it's a real pity the posts that require a more extensive reading and a higher level of attention stay without comments.
ReplyDeleteIt's the same in my LiveJournal - the post about a Munchen beer experience gets dozens of comments while photos from Kunstkammer in Vienna is hardly visited.
I just got back from 2 weeks in Europe and post every day. And there are no surprises - discussion of food and drinks starts exchange of opinions, photos from museums cause yawns.
I can only imagine the situation at Facebook and Twitter...
I've generally been lucky enough to be surprised by which posts get looked at a lot or even commented on. I've put up certain text-heavy posts with a single pic that I fear won't interest anyone, only to get a larger-than-expected response, and then put up other posts I expect to be obviously popular that turn out to inspire hardly any response at all. As much as I might hope that people will like what I post, it seems a luxury to me to be able to not have to worry about response--in contrast to, say, running a bookstore in which one must fret every day about sales.
DeleteBut, yes, I suppose it's no surprise that beer in Munchen would outstrip art on pretty much any day...
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ReplyDeleteI had chance to visit few furnaces last summer in July. It was a very nice experience but at the same time I felt sorry for the master glasses working in such hot conditions for 8 hours a day!! I was literally melting during my 20min visit. They told me that luckily they normally shut down the furnace in August because of the high temperatures!
ReplyDeleteWorking in such conditions really requires a certain kind of endurance, I'd think. I suppose one can acclimate oneself to it, but I'm with you, I don't personally know how they do it--even with the 1.5 gallons of water each of them drink each day to stay hydrated.
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