Thursday, March 15, 2012

The Home Beautiful: A Venetian Glass Perfume Sprinkler, 1599-1700


Perfume Sprinkler
Murano, Italy, 1599-1700
The Victoria & Albert Museum


The glassmakers of Murano, an island near Venice, as we know, were renowned for their exceptional skill and creativity. This glass perfume sprinkler demonstrates that brilliance quite beautifully. 

The bottle was partly blown in a mould in the shape of a stringed instrument.  Blue glass was added to this to give the musical instrument bird-like qualities while the long spout takes the form of a snake.

Perfume would trickle down the spout.  To control the flow, the user would just need to place his or her thumb over the blue-rimmed hole in the side.

This beauty was made sometime in the Seventeenth Century. 




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