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Friday Slide Show: A Murano Bracelet
12 December 2025
Riculous, we thought, as we fell into our 25-year-old gas-powered vehicle. Tomorrow, we calculated, was our 50th anniversary and we still didn't have a suitable present. How many years does it take us?
We had, of course, some good excuses. We had something in mind but the shop selling it had peculiar hours. They weren't open on Black Friday Sunday, for example. They were closed in the mornings. And they went home at 4 in the afternoon.
It was already 3 p.m. when, putting the antique key in the ignition, we wondered if we had time to make the trip to and through the city to the Museo shop in Fort Mason.
Well, try, we told ourselves. No one has to know if you didn't make it in time. An d if you do, terrific.
We started the trip on the freeway and then wound through the city to the Presidio, stop light after maddening stop light, avoiding Uber after maddening Lyft, then we stop signed over to the Marina and turned into Fort Mason. With 15 minutes to spare.
We jumped out of the car and bounded up the metal stairs to the Museo, whose doors were still open. We breathlessly (four stairs are a lot for a geezer) told the charming clerk what we were looking for and she led us to the jewelry counter.
The piece we were interested in was not there. Of course. But we had misgivings about it anyway. It was a necklace for someone who has never worn necklaces.
But we fell for a bracelet, perhaps because we'd just been admiring Mom's charm bracelet.
This one is different. Instead of metal charms, each of which could tell a story (as the appraiser put it), it had tiny ornaments of Murano glass made by CC Zecchin, founded by cousins Andrea and Michele Zecchin in 1993 near Venice.
Murano glass is handmade and it shows it. It has a personality that machine extrusions can't imitate. Each piece is unique.
There were two of them, completely different. We picked the one we liked best for no particular reason. Except maybe love at first sight.
Which made for a perfect anniversary gift after all.
