Notes from the Murano Furnace

The maestro works with his back to the furnace and his eyes on the glass, which is the only way to see the color turn. Obsidian glass is unforgiving: two seconds too long in the annealing and the button cracks itself three days later, quietly, in a drawer.

Of every hundred buttons cast, perhaps sixty survive the week. Of those, forty match each other closely enough to line a single coat. The mathematics of craft is brutal and honest; it is why our buttons cost more than most garments.

We bought two hundred. We will use perhaps ninety. The rest sit in the atelier’s drawer of beautiful failures, which is the most inspiring object we own.