The Crafting Tours of Venice
Sometimes simply just touring around to see all the different kinds of artwork and buildings around ancient or interesting places like Rome, Venice or much of Italy, just isn’t enough. Instead, being able to get your hands dirty and doing or seeing the process of that artwork get made can be a more fulfilling experience. Luckily there are quite a few tours, workshops and classes that you can take that aren’t more than a few hours and you get to do something unique and learn about the type of art project you are interested in.
Mosaic Workshops in Venice
The first on the list is learning how to do mosaics the Italian way, and they certainly know how to produce their mosaics, just look at some of them in Rome or Venice. Most of the courses involved with learning how to cut and craft mosaics into designs are over two weeks long, which means you’ll need to be expecting quite the stay to keep up with one of these. There are also entire Artisan schools where you can devote yourself to becoming a mosaic master, instead of just learning the basics of the art with the quick course. Probably the most known and one that does offer the simple two (and sometimes one) week course is the Orsoni Mosaic Studio and Glass foundry in Venice.
Glassblowing Tours in Murano
Glassblowing has been a staple of Rome for hundreds of years, but the origins of an entire island devoted to glassblowing comes from the times in Venice when glassblowers were abundant and fires were frequently feared. Because of that all glassblowers were forced to move into the Murano district, and it has been the glassblowing center of the world since. You won’t be able to find glassblowing workshops, but there are plenty glass blowing tours that focus on providing live demonstrations. If you would like to get into the business of glassblowing you will likely have to apprentice yourself with a glassblower to learn all about how to do it.
Lacemaking Side-stop in Burano
Most people might be surprised by the variety of color this small Venetian island of Burano has to offer, but it happens to be one of the first things that will be noticed by people visiting Burano. Then they might notice all the clothing everywhere; and that is because of the other thing this town is famous for: Lace-making. Such an art as lace-making is not only hand-made like many of the above art styles, but is mostly dead these days, since there are usually far faster and easier methods of creating lace that most of the consumer worlds follow. Still anyone of the people out there in this town that does lace-making would be more than happy to show you how to do it. And you can even find plenty of tours and workshops on learning some of the lacemaking talent.
Venetian Mask Making Tours
One of the major highlights of visiting Venice tends to be obtaining one of the many Venetian masks and possibly even using them in the Carnevale festival. Fortunately you don’t have to pay for some fancy mask, you can instead pay to learn how to make your own mask in the same design as the Venetians make theirs! There are usually Venice tours you can find that will provide stops into a mask workshop, and you will feel even more connected to your mask, because you made it yourself rather than buying a random one!
If none of these seem to suit you, there are always plenty of other areas in Italy that provide other types of artistic views and workshops. You can find ceramic making, and ceramic painting workshops in the center of Italy or a variety of craft shops in Rome. But for any of the above sections, your best options are in the beautiful and artistic Venice and the islands surrounding it.
Sarah Murphy has worked in Dublin for the last two years as a blogger, web content manager and marketing coordinator. A journalist by training and travel junkie by nature, she regularly travels to Italy for both business and to experience some of the tours of Venice, where she mostly spends her time learning how to blow glass from the pros.