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TRADITIONS A New Transparency P Since the Middle Ages, Murano glass has been both beloved E and reviled for its strange shapes, odd colors and secretive techniques. Now, a new O generation of international artisans is referencing and P resurrecting the Italian craft. By Nancy Hass Photographs by Hugo Yu L Prop Styling by Chloe Daley E P RADICAL INSULARITY WAS for centuries a way of life on Murano, a small island less than a mile north of Venice. After the monumental glass L furnaces that operated during the Middle Ages were moved there from the city in 1291 to sequester frequent fires, the government required workers to remain cloistered on the island to raise their families A through the generations. These glass dynasties elevated the medium’s aesthetic with chandeliers, named Paolo Venini bought a glass operation with chalices and mirrors, achieving along the way the Venetian antiques dealer Giacomo Cappellin, C a degree of nobility, but their comings and goings convincing artisans to focus on clean lines and were strictly monitored so trade secrets wouldn’t saturated hues like violet, sapphire, cranberry and leak; even then, globalization was a threat. Venetian emerald. In 1932, Venini hired Carlo Scarpa, a E merchants had learned glassmaking largely from then 26-year-old Venetian who would later become the Muslim world more than a century before, but one of Italy’s most important architects. Scarpa, they preferred to keep their lessons from the Silk who was soon joined by a young Gio Ponti, another Road a one-way street. future Italian design legend, would help create the S Of course, like sand, the main component of lexicon and shapes we now think of as Murano: glass, such expertise was impossible to fully contain. frosted ribbing on translucent orbs, volcanic colors, Murano lost its dominance by the 18th century, as corroded effects that resemble distressed wood countries including France, England and Germany or iridescent fish scales. Murano glass from that era perfected their own glass industries; Napoleon remains coveted by collectors and designers, T Bonaparte’s 1797 takeover and dissolution of the but the following decades were less fruitful: Since city-state — he shuttered most of the furnaces, the end of the 20th century, more than half of the leaving only bead-making and simple glassblowing island’s industrial operations have shut down, Contemporary Murano- — was the final indignity. leaving about 100 ateliers. Most of the remaining H inspired works, clockwise Fifty years later, local industrialists such as glassmakers are older than 70, and the younger from top left: Stories of Italy black-and-white Antonio Salviati, whose eponymous company still generation is largely uninterested in spending long reversible vase, about maintains a presence on the island, tried to bring days in front of red-hot, 2,000-degree ovens I $260, storiesofitaly.com; Murano back, but it wasn’t until after World War I on a spit of land with about 5,000 inhabitants. Hawkins New York Confetti double old-fashioned glass, that the industry once again found its purpose, $14, hawkinsnewyork.com; reborn as “art glass.” Murano wares of the later IN RECENT YEARS, though, a group of international Jonah Takagi Brut vessel, N Middle Ages had been either optically clear (a style designers and artists has rediscovered the innate $1,900, ateliertakagi.com; Hawkins New York Confetti called cristallo) or pale (lattimo), featuring curlicues modernity of Italian blown glass, turning to Murano highball tumbler, $16. and frippery, but in 1921, a Milanese lawyer as inspiration and, in some cases, as a practical G S TRADITIONS PEOPLE, PLACES, THINGS PEOPLE, PLACES, Mandarin Oriental hotel in Paris. “You have to ‘People who blow actually go there instead of just sending a sketch by glass around email,” says Buratto. “These are people who don’t read emails, who maybe stopped going to school at the world perceive place to fabricate ambitious objects. “I have Murano 15 to become a master at this. They want you to Murano as more in the blood,” says Luca Nichetto, a 44-year-old work side by side with them. They are your hands.” welcoming, and multidisciplinary designer with studios in both that has sparked Stockholm and Venice. Born and raised on the island FOR OTHER DESIGNERS, however, Murano is more as the grandson of a master glassblower and the son a state of mind than a place of pilgrimage, a symbol an aesthetic of a mother who decorated works that emerged of modernist élan and fervid coloration. The rediscovery,’ from the kilns, he returns to Murano to produce, 41-year-old Washington, D.C.-based designer Jonah says the artist for instance, his fishbowl-size Rotea pendant Takagi, for instance, recently released a collection Andrew O. Hughes. with aubergine vertical waves, which he makes by that includes geometric vessels made in ceramic spinning the globes as the molten liquid glass molds created from bits of castoff materials that decoration is applied. Murano glass, he says, stays other glassmakers had previously used; their hotter longer because of its unique ingredients — confetti-like motifs in intense tangerine, marigold and each type of sand, as well as the proportion of ruby echo those found in the Venini archives. sodium oxide, nitrate and other minerals, changes The Brooklyn-based glass artist Andrew O. Hughes, the nature of the material — so it can be worked 42, attributes contemporary interest in Murano more intricately, enabling wild shapes and complex to several factors: a bit of ceramic fatigue, a desire etching. “I explain to people I work with all over for the luminosity of glass in an era of pared-down the world what it is to have these craftsmen, how it interiors, an increasing openness to outsiders is not like anywhere else,” Nichetto says. among the islands’ glassmakers. When Hughes was a For Dario Buratto and Matilde Antonacci, student, one of the members of an ancient Murano both 39, who run the Milanese brand Stories of Italy, family came for a demonstration at the Rhode working with the island’s artisans symbolizes a Island School of Design but refused to answer any conscious rejection of manufactured polish. The technical questions. “I don’t think that would To watch the business partners, who met in 2000 while studying happen now,” he says. “People who blow glass around artist Andrew O. design in Florence, spent their early careers in the world perceive the place as more welcoming, Hughes make one Italy’s fashion scene, but they felt increasingly drawn and that has sparked an aesthetic rediscovery.” He of his multicolor Murano-style to more elemental crafts, especially mid-20th- recently was asked by Roman and Williams, the glass vases, visit century Murano glass, which to them represented New York-based interior design firm, to blow tmagazine.com. an era when the Italian avant-garde found a kinship prototypes of candleholders that the founders Robin with the country’s deep handmade traditions. After Standefer and Stephen Alesch later took to Murano the fashion designer Vivienne Westwood displayed the to have produced for Guild, their TriBeCa retail store. pair’s first vases in her Milan store in 2015, they (The island’s fabricators, unsurprisingly, are skilled at decided to open their iterating upon existing objects.) own studio. Now, they Other recent works, from left: Hughes’s work has evolved in tandem: The series travel weekly to the Murano Glam Serenissima of vases he crafted last year for a show in New York Oro gold-leaf glasses, $410 island, working with for set of six, artemest features rounded bottoms and a cascade of deep several makers to .com; Andrew O. Hughes greens and luscious pinks that conjure the island’s create vases and glasses Confetti bottle, $280, vibrant, whipsawed history. “Glass, by nature, has a spartan-shop.com; Stories of for the candlemaker Italy ivory, green and blue certain mystery,” he says, “but Murano is the deepest, PROP ASSISTANT: HOANG DINH. BOTH STORIES OF ITALY VASES ARE PART OF THE MACCHIA SU MACCHIA COLLECTION MACCHIA SU MACCHIA THE OF PART ARE VASES ITALY OF STORIES BOTH DINH. HOANG ASSISTANT: PROP 34 TIMES THE 34 STYLE YORK NEW T: MAGAZINE Diptyque and the medium vase, about $260. most soulfully mysterious of them all.” .