The first though I had while taking these pictures, was to take part in the #MarketFriday initiative of @dswigle which I wanted to be more active in than I was at that time. But if you've been posting in this community or have read her last posts, the activity was paused for an undetermined period of time.
Still, since I took those pictures and I've always found it interesting to stare at different window shops just because they say a lot about that place as well as discover a bit of the specific culture and traditions, I will share these further but under the community of @tattoodjay as a Wednesday Walk post. It has also been a while since my last Wednesday Walk article, so here we go.
Some of the things that you will see at, literally, at every step, are the decorations made of Murano glass, the notebooks, boats, and the fountain pen that always look amazing on a table whether it's at home or at the office.
The ornaments made of Murano glass are quite popular, but not the most popular ones in Venice since there is the Murano island where you can see a lot more diversity within these and possibly get a certificate that you've bought something original rather than a copy. This is something that happens pretty rarely and along with the tens of shops I visited, I didn't find anyone offering one, but as long as they look nice and are carefully made, I think it's still nice. But I'd recommend buying these from the island in case you are interested.
The Murano glass can be found in more forms, from common statues to crockery pieces and from jewelry to tiny ornaments added over other products, for example, a Wine Stopper.
Some more popular things that you can purchase as a genuine physical memory from Venice, are, obviously, the masks. Perhaps most of you are used to the masks that are more common for carnivals which is also what I considered being the main landmark of Venice, but there is another type of masks that I loved even more, which is traditionally known as a Plague Doctor Mask, but which can be described as steampunk masks too.
If you are a video game lover, then most likely these are not strange for you as they became a lot more popular in the world after being frequently used in the Assassin's Creed series which is also one of my favorite series ever played, but the history behind them is a lot deeper than you would think.
It seems like these masks were initially used in the 17th century as part of a specific outfit meant to purify poisonous air which was considered the main reason for the very nature of the dangerous disease, but they were wrong. Even if the mask looked rather weird than what you usually see doctors wearing, this one came out very useful due to the space inside that allowed them to fill the masks with no less than 55 herbs or other components that would protect them from inhaling various airborne viruses.
But as we are in the 21st century and more than anything the world evolves in many ways, so do art and artists who create masks.
That's how during my walk I ran into this shop that presented masks in a lot different ways from what I was seeing before, talking about complex versions of the traditional masks, masks with different famous characters (like Anonymous), but also masks resembling various animal heads which I'd personally love to see somewhere in my room.
As beautiful those pieces of art are, no doubt the prices are in line with all the details each mask comes up with, which makes me think that the lady from the shop doesn't see a real buyer very often, but rather curious tourists like me. Fortunately, that didn't contribute to the lady's happiness as she kept her smile on her face during the time of our entire visit, which made me happy even though I wasn't able to purchase any of these but managed to share my appreciation through words and smiles which sometimes weight more than we think.
I know Milano is the capital of fashion and most likely these window shops are a lot more popular in that part of Italy, but being quite close to Milano didn't make me miss some of the most famous brands' window shops which definitely caught a lot of attention from those passing by, even if watching just from the outside. And I absolutely love where creativity was taken with this occasion!
More articles from Venice:
Gabriela Travels is the FOUNDER of "Festival Mania" who started this community from the passion of attending various festivals and with the purpose of encouraging more people to explore festivals all around the world and share their experiences. At the same time, Gabriela is an independent Graphic Design Freelancer since 2019 completing over 600+ orders in this time and collaborating with various businesses and people from all over the globe. Additonally, Gabriela has her own corner on the internet since 2017 where she writes various articles for her blog, the most popular being the travel ones (260+ articles written on this field), but also abording other topics as well, like game reviews, movie and series reviews, photography posts, cooking recipes and more, boosting the total number of articles written to 550+ blog posts. Gabriela is also a gamer since she was 11 years old and gaming remains one of her biggest passions along with traveling, editing, cooking, and doing various sports activities.
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