The drawing and the artefact : biomorphism in the design of murano glass objects in the 20th century

By analysing the relationship between drawing and actual object, it is observed that the design of glass artefacts depends on the features of the material itself, on the processing techniques and their limits. More generally, therefore, we can say that form is the result of forces located inside the matter, as it also happens in the generation of a living organism. For this reason the discourse on the creation and graphic representation of these objects can be approached from the point of view of biomorphism, a feature that can be found in similar artefacts on several levels: from the figu-rativity of the glass animals to the almost abstract shape obtained from the self-organising matter through its intrinsic forces. It is precisely in the creations with a higher degree of abstraction that we observe the same “biomorphic” feature found in some of the major scientific and artistic studies since the 1950s, although the tradition of blown glass, with its particular processing techniques, is preserved.