May 2020

Carlo Scarpa and the magic of the Glass

What happens when the best Architect in the 19th century and the magic art of the blowing glass meet in Venice, in the most attractive city in the world? One of the most beautiful masterpieces the world has never seen: the collection of the vase in Fenicio or “graffito” as indicated in the notes of Carlo Scarpa. These masterpieces are distinguished by the polychrome glass with a finish “a festoni”.

This pattern is achieved by applying around the surface of the molten glass a vitreous spiral, then “combed” with a special instrument hook-shaped called “maneretta”. For this collection were chosen color combinations of great impact ( red coral, lattimo ) enhanced with the application of gold leaf. In the last image instead the technique “Fenicio” or “a piume” is well represented in a marvelous vase of Vetrarti dated ’70.

Vetrarti and The Russian Avant-Garde

My passion for Economics and my studies in Cà Foscari never would have involved with Russian Avant-Garde, both for the madness of Marx’s theories and for little importance of the Soviet economy. It was thanks to Maryana Iskra I fell in love with the artistic movement of Kandisnkij, Malevic, Lissitzky. Something that fascinated me of the Russian Avant-Garde is the approach to a contemporary in a changing world where the keyword is simplicity and the spirit with which these artists dealt with the modern.

The style draws its inspiration from Suprematism and especially from Malevic. The love for the movement can be seen in the combination of geometric figures aimed as the supreme essence of the vision: squares, triangles, circles and geometric lines.

The Glamour shades of Alabaster

On August 15th in the wonderful Petersburg, Maryana Iskra presented to a selected group of Architects the project “THE GLAMOUR SHADES OF ALABASTER”. This project is the result of experimentation of VETRARTI on polychromatic reactions. Audience reaction was.. enthusiastic!!!

The thread binding Alexandra of Egypt with Murano

Now there are small positives which mean much these days and so I would like to reach your heart by talking about an extraordinary glass technique that has come to Murano even from Alexandra of Egypt. The Egyptian masters had invented the production of glass rods that served to make glass tiles for mosaics but under the danger of the raids of the Turks and the Ottoman Empire decided to move and found a safe place in the port of Venice where they stopped once and for all ( middle ages).

The genius of the Venetians then provoked an explosion of vitality and magic in the use of this technique, made of new skills, drawings, renewed colors and transparency, a combination of plots that have resulted in a heritage of immense value that we can admire in private collections, museums or as a surprise in the house of an art collector, masterpieces that measure the sophistication of that person.

Vetrarti and the new tee shirts

Today came the new Vetrarti tee shirts. I guess the best model is Polina Meier. In addition to being a wonderful model Polina is also a brilliant artist: take a look at her instagram. #moiprovodnik

The “MAGIOSSO”

These are pictures of something I have been fascinated by ever since I was a child and was visiting, with childish curiosity, my father’s glassworks. The “MAGIOSSO”: a wooden tool with half-spherical form, used for rounding up and shape the “PEA” (bolo or parison). Only pearwood is used to produce this tool because the molten mass taken from the pot has a temperature of 1000-1100 °C ( 1800-2000 °F). What fascinated me was the marvelous design of this tool: a genuine Artcraft!