Getty Museum

Filigrana Bottle (Kuttrolf)

Date

late 16th or early 17th century

Medium

Free- and mold-blown colorless (slightly gray) glass with lattimo canes

Culture

Italian

Department

Decorative Arts

Institution

Getty Museum

The narrow, curved neck of this *kuttrolf* helps slow the pouring of its contents to a trickle and may explain this bottle's name, since *gutta* is a drop of water in Latin. Widely popular in the 1500s and 1600s, *kuttrolfen* were likely also valued for the gurgling sounds they produced and for their strange and elegant shapes. The twisted white canes of opaque white glass are blown into complex patterns known as *vetro a fili* and *vetro a retorti.* These lacy linear designs revolutionized the appearance of Venetian glass when it was perfected in the mid-1500s; it quickly won the admiration of a wealthy international clientele. In 1550 an eyewitness described the invention and fantasy offered by glassmakers at Murano: *Glassmen make a variety of objects: cups, phials, pitchers, globular bottles, dishes, saucers, mirrors, animals, trees, ships. Of so many wonderful objects I should take long to tell. I have seen such at Venice, and especially...on sale at Murano where are the most famous of all glass factories.*

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