Murano Fantasy is an NFT piece of art made by artist Pandelune and is currently on sale on artblocks.io.

Inspiration and background

20 years ago, my mum offered me a Murano paperweight. I started to get interested in paperweights, and I collected a few hundreds of them.

There are different types of paperweight, and Murano (an island near Venice) is a typical kind. Murano paperweights are made of millefiori canes. Millefiori means "thousand flowers" in Italian, and a cane is a cross section of a cylindrical composite cane from colored rods, which looks like a flower.

These canes are produced semi industrially since the Ancient Romans - and largely exported. Millefiori canes were even found in the Sutton Hoo Anglo Saxon burial site.

A random final paperweight

Zoom on canes:
Press 'n' (next) or space to automatically focus on noteworthy canes. Use 'p' (previous) to go back to previous cane. Press 'c' (clear) to reset zoom.
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List of canes

The paperweight is composed of numerous canes. Each cane has properties, and is present a specific number of times in the paperweight.

Quantity	Size	Properties
1	3	uniquefrom libcomplex complexity: 9
1	7	classic signatureunique complexity: 4
1	9	uniquefrom lib complexity: 8
1	8	uniquefrom lib complexity: 7
1	3	uniquefrom lib complexity: 6
1	6	uniquefrom lib complexity: 5
1	6	uniquefrom lib complexity: 5
1	5	uniquefrom lib complexity: 5
1	3	unique complexity: 8
1	3	unique complexity: 8

Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next

Layout explained

Layout type: delaunay

Delaunay is a fantastic closepack, mixing large and small canes, which does not exist in real world paperweights.

Flat

Cane profiles, without being deformed by the glass dome.

Projected

The cane profiles, once projected on the glass dome.

Final

The final paperweight.

Stats explained

Property

Value

Explanation

canesFromLib

Some canes are randomly generated while others exist in real world paperweights. Indicates the number of canes within that paperweight that exist as is in real world paperweights.

randomCanes

180

Number of canes which are generated randomly.

layoutType

delaunay

The general layout of the paperweight. 3 possibles values: closepack, concentric, or delaunay.

generalStyle

cogs

The general style of the chosen canes. This has an important impact on the general style of the paperweight.

cogs	favor cogwheel like canes, very angular (which is very typical of Murano)
smoothCogs	still cogwheels, but the tooth have smooth angles
pinchedCircles	like a cog, but each teeth looks like the part of a circle
simpleCircles	favor concentric circles
allMixed	no specific style, each cane has a random style

Even if a paperweight has a specific general style (e.g. cogs), the chosen canes will often be mixed.

simplestCane

The number of elements of the simplest cane of the paperweight.

mostComplexCane

The number of elements of the most complex cane of the paperweight.

hasCentralCane

false

Indicates if the paperweight has a central cane (in the very center). Concentric paperweights always have a central cane.

numberOfCanes

187

The total number of canes.

caneSetType

allDifferent

Indicates how, within a layout, the canes were chosen.

When the layout is closepack or delaunay:

allDifferent	all the canes are different (each is unique)
classic	there is cane diversity, but most canes are present multiple times

When the layout is concentric:

1pattern	all canes are the same, except the central cane
2pattern	around the central cane, there are circles made with the same cane, in a 1-2-1-2... pattern
3pattern	same as 2pattern but with a 1-2-3-1-2-3... pattern
allGarlandsDifferent	each circle is made of different canes

uniqueCanes

187

The number of canes that are unique (present only once) within this paperweight.

differentCanes

187

The total number of different canes.

diversity

The cane diversity of the paperweight. It is equal to differentCanes / numberOfCanes. When all canes are unique, its value is 1.

hasSignatureCane

true

Indicates if the paperweight contains one (or more) signature canes. Some paperweights are signed, some are not.

hasSecondSignature

false

Indicates if a signed paperweight has a second signature. Some paperweights are double signed, probably by mistake...

hasRareSignature

false

Some signed paperweights have a non standard, rare signature, that might appear instead of or complementary to a standard signature.

concentricCircles

When the layoutType is concentric, indicates the number of concentric circles of canes around the central cane (including the central cane).

lastGarlandAlternate

false

When the layoutType is concentric, the last circle of canes (the one closest to the border) can sometimes be made of alternate canes: 2 different canes alternated instead of just 1.

About Murano Fantasy and Pandelune

About the author

I am Pandelune, the author of Orthogone, Murano Fantasy and Reverie.

As a teen, I was fascinated by the Demoscene, and by computer art in general, especially ray tracing.

When I was in high school, computers were not connected to the internet. I used to develop random based art using whatever language was available on these computers, and let it run for hours, just to impress whoever passed by. Think of random ASCII art. I'm in love with computer graphics and random numbers since then.

Follow Pandelune on twitter.

Original description (from artblocks.io)

Last night I dreamed of Murano and of paperweights...
"Murano Fantasy" is a tribute to glassmakers who, since Antiquity, have been producing murrines. Murrines are assembled into paperweights, with different layouts. The central cane, when present, is often sophisticated, and the paperweight might be signed by the artist.

Approach

I used a sample reference paperweight: reference Murano paperweight

I coded the canes from this paperweight one by one, discovering the basic shapes: cogwheels, spirograph like shapes, etc., which compose a cane. It helped me a lot to start with real, visible examples.

Some of these original cane are included in Murano Fantasy paperweights, as is.

Original	Generated

I then wrote a generative grammar to assemble shapes. When I started randomizing everything, and seeing the result, I started to see the magic happening.

For the colors, I used the color-scheme.js library by Brian Hann. It is quite flashy by default, which is ideal for Murano style.

Generative process

Choose a layout type	closepack, concentric, or delaunay
Generate the layout	arrange the canes
Generate the canes	Different shapes are generated (cogwheels, spyrograph like shapes, etc.), and are imbricated to make a cane. These can be very basic or very entangled: like with a real paperweight, you might need a magnifying glass.
Put the canes on the layout	depending on the layout and the chosen canes
Sign the paperweight	As a tradition, the artist might sign the paperweight. This signature cane can be more or less visible.

Sample cane shapes and components

Canes are composed of basic shapes imbricated one into another. This table shows these basic shapes.

Type	Description	Random, large	Random, small
Cogs	Cogwheel like canes, very angular. Very typical of Murano.
Smooth cogs	Still cogwheels, but the teeth have smoother angles. Also very typical in Murano.
Pinched circles	Like a cog, but each tooth looks like the part of a circle.
Inverted pinched circles	Same a pinched circles but with inverted circle shape: circle parts are removed instead of being added.
Bubbles	Bubbles of different sizes, which do no overlay.
Scatter	Random circles of the same size, which may overlay. Exists in real Murano canes.
Scatter paving	More or less irregular paving.
Hypotrochoids	Spirograph shapes.