TRACY CHEVALIER is well known for her meticulously researched historical novels. She has made a virtue of imagining the stories behind artistic accomplishments — the work of Vermeer, of the medieval tapestry-makers, of the kneeler-stitchers in the early 20th century — and in placing women at the centre of the narrative.
In The Glassmakers, she turns her attention to the famous Venetian glassmakers of Murano. The heroine is Orsola Rosso, just 17 when the story begins, in 1486, who has to fight against societal expectations to fulfil her artistic ambitions. When her father dies in an accident, the family business comes under threat. To help the household to stay afloat, Orsola learns to be a bead-maker, under the tutelage of a rare (and historical) maestra, Maria Barovier. Beads, as Maria tells Orsola, “fill the spaces between things. . . They don’t get in the way. They are inconsequential, and women can make them because of that.”
Orsola experiences love, heartbreak, marriage, and motherhood, but it is her bead-making that stays the course. Although her older brother dismisses her work as escrementi di coniglio (rabbit droppings), her craft gives her a way of expressing her creativity — and, through it, grants her unexpected agency.
The twist in this novel is the element of time-shifting. In the opening paragraph, Chevalier warns the reader that the City of Water runs by its own clock. She describes a stone skimming across water: thus the narrative touches down at particular moments in history, from the plague years to the Age of Enlightenment, from the Great War to Covid. Orsola witnesses 500 years, although she is only in her sixties at the end of the novel.
In less accomplished hands this could feel forced. But Chevalier is a mistress of her art, and the result is beguiling: as colourful and mesmerising as molten glass.
Sarah Meyrick is the Editor of the Church Times.
The Glassmaker
Tracy Chevalier
The Borough Press £20
(978-0-00-815386-1)
Church Times Bookshop £18