Murano Chandelier Glossary

A quick reference to the Italian names for the parts, processes and styles of the Murano chandelier, for anyone choosing one.

Parts of the chandelier

Bobèche: drip pan or collar
The shallow dish or collar set beneath each light, originally to catch dripping wax. On Murano chandeliers it is often shaped as an open flower or a small cup.

Braccio (plural bracci): arm
The arms that carry the lights. On a traditional Murano chandelier they are clad in, or made of, blown glass, and each ends in a cup that holds the candle or bulb. Larger chandeliers set their arms in two or more tiers.

Catenelle: little chains
Chains of glass links, hung between the arms or draped from them to join the composition together.

Cimiero: crest
The crowning ornament at the top of the central column, usually one of the richest pieces on the chandelier.

Coppa or coppetta reggicandela: cup or candle cup
The glass cup at the end of each arm that holds the candle or, today, the bulb holder. Its rim is often scalloped, ribbed or edged with small applied leaves.

Finale: finial
The ornament near the foot of a classic Venetian chandelier, just above the fiocco. Its form varies from one chandelier to the next.

Fiocco: tassel
The lowest ornament on the chandelier, often shaped like an upholsterer's tassel, from which it takes its name, though it may also be an olive or a small ball. It is traditionally tied to the finale with silver thread.

Foglie and fiori: leaves and flowers
The glass leaves and flowers, each made separately and set around the frame and arms. On eighteenth-century chandeliers the flowers were often of brightly coloured glass paste.

Fondino: base bowl
The glass bowl at the heart of a classic Venetian chandelier, often trimmed with glass threads and flowers. It conceals the hollow metal frame into which the arms, leaves, flowers and other ornaments are slotted. Below it hang, in order, the passasòrze, the finale and the fiocco.

Fusto or colonna: stem or column
The central stem from which the arms spring, often shaped like a baluster (a balaustro). It is clad in a sequence of blown-glass pieces threaded over the metal frame.

Passasòrze: literally mouse-pass
Venetian workshop slang for the small spool-shaped glass piece that separates the fondino from the finale, the gap being just wide enough, so the name suggests, for a mouse to slip through.

Pastorale (also riccio): crozier (riccio: curl)
Named after the bishop's crook-headed staff, whose curled head Italians call the riccio. On a chandelier it is a blown-glass scroll, usually finely ribbed in rigadin, fixed to the frame purely as ornament and made in tall and short forms. In a pastorale chandelier these scrolls take the place of the usual leaves and flowers.

Pendenti or pendagli: pendants or drops
The glass drops that hang from the arms and catch the light. Historic Murano chandeliers carry glass spheres and grape-like clusters (pendenti a sfera e a grappolo) as well as faceted drops.

Recèla: loop
A small glass loop, shaped while hot, from which tassels, pendants and other ornaments are hung.

Making

Filigrana: filigree
Fine threads of milk-white or coloured glass running within clear glass, made from canes that carry the threads inside them. A Murano technique since the first half of the sixteenth century, and found on chandelier arms and elements.

Foglia d'oro (and d'argento): gold leaf (and silver leaf)
Sheets of gold or silver leaf rolled onto the hot glass and then cased in a further layer. As the piece is blown, the leaf breaks into a fine, glittering scatter. Venetian gold-leaf glass is recorded from the second half of the fifteenth century.

Investimento: cladding (literally "investing")
The traditional method of building a Murano chandelier. A metal frame, forged by smiths, is dressed piece by piece in blown-glass elements until the structure all but disappears. This is why a Murano chandelier arrives as hundreds of separate pieces, and why a broken part can be remade and replaced. Today's makers often call it investitura.

Molatura: grinding and polishing
The finishing stage, in which a piece is ground, smoothed and polished on progressively finer wheels. It gives cut and faceted elements their sparkle.

Rigadin (and rigadin ritorto): fine ribbing (and twisted ribbing)
Fine ribs made by blowing the glass into a grooved mould. Twisted in the mould, the ribs spiral to give rigadin ritorto. A favourite finish for chandelier arms, cups and scrolls.

Soffiatura: glassblowing
The shaping of glass by blowing air through a hollow iron pipe into a gather of molten glass, which is then worked by hand. Almost every glass element of a Murano chandelier is made this way, one piece at a time.

Vetro cristallo: glass crystal
Murano's clear, colourless and brilliant glass, the most prized of its glasses since the fifteenth century. It differs in composition from English and Bohemian crystal: as a soda glass it stays workable for longer when hot, which is what allows the flowing curves of leaves, flowers and arms. On a Murano chandelier, "crystal" means this glass, not cut lead crystal.

Named styles

A colonna: columnar
A ciocca built around glass columns, often twisted, rather than a single stem. The Museo del Vetro on Murano holds an eighteenth-century example, probably from Briati's workshop, with four twisted columns and arms ending in dolphins' heads.

Alla chinese or a pagoda: in the Chinese manner or pagoda-style
An eighteenth-century ciocca built up in tiers like a pagoda, crowded with flowers, leaves and pendants. Polychrome examples are prized above those in a single colour, and the type was reproduced well into the nineteenth century.

Ciocca (plural ciocche): bunch or cluster
The classic Venetian chandelier, its frame dressed in glass arms, leaves, flowers and pendants so that the whole reads as a bouquet. The form is credited to the eighteenth-century glassmaker Giuseppe Briati, and its most celebrated expression is the Rezzonico.

Componibile (also a moduli): modular
The twentieth-century answer to the chandelier with arms. Instead of a frame dressed in arms, leaves and flowers, the fitting is built from a single glass element repeated many times and hung from a metal structure. The same module can make a pendant, a cascade or a monumental chandelier. Venini presented its first at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair.

Poliedri: polyhedra
Venini's best-known modular element, a faceted polyhedron of blown cristallo. Poliedri were first used in the monumental chandelier designed by Ignazio Gardella with Enrico Peressutti and Paolo Venini for the Italian Pavilion at Brussels in 1958, which stood 4.6 metres high. Carlo Scarpa used them again for a luminous cascade at the Italia '61 exhibition in Turin. Venini still makes them.

Rezzonico
The best-known Murano chandelier, named after Giuseppe Briati's eighteenth-century masterpiece at Ca' Rezzonico, the Grand Canal palace that now houses the museum of eighteenth-century Venice. It carries two tiers of twenty candle-holders and flowers of coloured glass paste. The name now describes any chandelier in its manner, and most seen today are later reproductions.

Triedri: trihedra
Solid prisms of cristallo glass with a triangular cross-section, conceived by Venini between 1958 and 1960 as vertical modules for lighting. Hung in tiers, spirals or hemispheres, each prism throws light in several directions. The name is now also used loosely for similar prisms by other makers.

Other styles you may meet

These are not Murano forms, but buyers will often meet them alongside Murano chandeliers when browsing, so it helps to know how they differ.

Maria Teresa (also Maria Theresa)
A Viennese Baroque style, not a Venetian one. Its frame is of wrought iron, gilded and clad in bands of glass and crystal rosettes, then hung with cut-crystal pendants; the Viennese glass house Lobmeyr dates its classic design to about 1780. Where a Murano chandelier is built from blown glass shaped while hot, a Maria Teresa relies on cut crystal for its sparkle.

© 2026 Italian Lighting Centre. All rights reserved.