The Energy Crisis,

is now starting to hit households and businesses, 

and this is one business that is being hit very hard, the glass blowing and manufacturing industries based in Murano in Venice, that we visited in 2018, the furnaces run 24/7 and consume huge quantities of gas, how huge? For the roughly 100 existing Murano factories, it adds up to about 10 to 11 million cubic meters on a normal year, according to the trade group Consorzio Promovetro Murano. Prices of gas spiked a year ago (even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine), hitting €2.60 per cubic meter ($91 per cubic foot) in July 2022, about a 1,200 percent increase from the normal rate of around €0.20 per cubic meter ($7 per cubic foot) set in September 2021, according to the trade group. Now, the industry is faced with a crisis unlike any other,

“About 80 percent of [Murano glassmakers] have stopped their production, while the rest work with less power … and fewer workers,” a spokesperson from the glassmaking umbrella group Consorzio Promovetro Murano told Artnet News. They added that gas prices are fluctuating daily as well, making it “impossible” to plan production,

after the extreme flooding in Venice in 2019 and a major loss in touristic incomes due to the pandemic, for many this may be the last straw. “This gas crisis is a severe blow to the Murano furnaces. I don’t know if they will all survive,” said Omar Signoretto, commercial and administrative manager of the company Signoretto Lampadari Murano,

Signoretto Lampadari Murano, is a family-run business, which won the 2022 Prize Designs for Modern Furniture and Lighting, closed their ovens from March to the end of April, and again in September. For now, they remain closed. Signoretto, the commercial and administrative manager, told Artnet News that he is waiting for more government aid following increases in gas bills, which went up on average by between about 400 and 1,000 percent over the last year, according to him. “It’s impossible with this price to turn on the (two to three) ovens. We’re waiting for new funds from the new government—we hope [it arrives] quickly,” he said,

as I have mentioned before glass blowing and making art pieces in glass has always fascinated me,

and hopefully the price of energy for all of us will start to fall, the photographs are ones we took when we visited Murano both in 2018 and 2016, for the full story of the gas crisis facing the island the story is here.