Emily Rhodes

A necklace for the Empress Josephine: The Glassmaker, by Tracy Chevalier, reviewed

With the family business in Murano under threat, the daughter of a Venetian glassmaker learns to craft perfect coloured beads, soon much sought after by high society

Caption reads: Multi-coloured Venetian glass beads. [Getty Images] 
issue 07 September 2024

The latest book from Tracy Chevalier, author of 11 novels, including the bestselling Girl with a Pearl Earring, tells the captivating story of Orsola Rosso, whom we first encounter in 1486 as a young girl on Murano, the glassmakers’ island in the Venetian lagoon. Within a few pages, her father, the maestro at the family’s workshop, is dramatically killed by a shard of glass flying ‘like a hot dart straight into his neck’.

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