Venice Artisan Excellence and Craftsmen Workshops Private Tour, Italy

Venice, in addition to being a city of art, has always been a city of artisan excellence and creative talent. For more than 1,000 years the hands of masterful Venetian craftsmen have been creating precious and refined objects: mosaics, glassware, fabrics, jewelry and perfumes. Innovative boutiques and concept stores are flanked by artisan studios, where masterpieces in glassware, pearl, gold, paper, and leather are created.

Highlights:

• Venice
• Ceramic shop
• Shoe shop
• Hat shop
• Art atelier
• Jewelry shop
• Murano glass
• Textile company

Includes: a guide

Departure: daily except Sunday

The tour will start from Campo San Giacomo, in front of a church, traditionally considered to be the oldest in town. You will start heading to Rialto fish market, where different types of fish are artfully arranged on stalls covered with deep layers of crushed ice.

The next stop will be in a Ceramic shop, where you will visit a local artisan who creates traditional rural products, using typical materials and manufacturing techniques which nowadays have been lost in the industrial production. These ceramics are made in Italy with bright colors, lively patterns and quality materials.

The next stop will be in a traditional shoe shop. The old bicycle tires were used as waterproof and hard wearing soles; the canvases of jute sacks, from the transport of seeds and grains, were transformed into excellent linings; the fabrics, even rags from old clothes, were transformed into the uppers.

You will also visit a hats shop owned by Giuliana who is a local stylist and her tiny shop is brimming with hats: Panama hats, gondolier's hats, hats for the carnival, waterproof hats, woolly hats and even wedding hats! The shop is officially recognized as a historic place of the Veneto Region.

During your next stop you will meet a "maestro marmorizzatore" - a master papermaker, specialized in ancient paper techniques which lives again in this production in Venice.

For the next stop, an art atelier will be waiting for you in the heart of Venice. Between Rialto Bridge and St. Marco square, in their precious and cozy atelier, since 2007 a couple of artists encourage with their creations the intimate relationship between the object and the viewer.

After here, you will head to a shop producing Murano glass jewelry, executed entirely by hand using the most refined techniques of the Venetian tradition.

Finally, the last stop will be in a textile company producing fine fabrics for furnishing and high fashion: velvets, damasks, lampases, brocatelles and the special "soprarizzo" velvet, which is still hand made.