SNOW WHITE AND THE GLASS DWARFS

As frequent visitors to Venice, Italy, my partner and I have adopted a saying: "The Venetians will make anything in glass – because they can!" And this (non copyright approved) interpretation of the personnel from Walt Disney's Biancaneve e i Sette Nani is as good an example as any of what can be done.

Whether it ought to be done is, of course, another matter entirely!

Today's tourists will find the glass shops of Venezia (which are only rivaled in number by the mask shops!) are full of glass versions of more or less any cartoon character you can name: from Disney and Warner Brothers favourites to Peanuts and the Simpsons – most of which, sadly, are cheap imitations imported from Taiwan.

Fifteen years ago, however, on our first visit, they were somewhat rarer and we found this miniature set on the glass-making island of Murano. They don't quite follow the authorised style sheets and some of the individual dwarfs are considerably easier to identify than others...