Incollect Magazine Issue 7

108 www.incollect.com Even today the brand continues to evolve and innovate — take for example the flush mount sconce or wall lamp, “Glassa,” by Rodolfo Dordoni from 1988 for Barovier & Toso and offered by Incollect dealer Munich Modern. Executed in salmon-colored thick glass and enameled metal, this design looks like a butterfly fluttering through the air. Vintage lighting dealer Stanislas Reboul has a marvelous contemporary Fireworks chandelier by Barovier & Toso, from the 1990s, in which the arms can adjust up or down. Casanova Venetian Glass & Art shows numerous contemporary glass designers working with Barovier & Toso. Casanova was founded 18 years ago by Keith Davison & Marina Montmorency in Naples, Florida, and they recently opened a second gallery there. Their two showrooms feature one of the largest selections of Murano glass in the United States, including a variety of contemporary creations from Barovier & Toso, such as a pair of ultra-modern looking table lamps in deep red and blue glass as well as a playful bright orange 8-arm glass chandelier. Barovier & Toso is still located in Murano and everything continues to be made with Murano-blown glass, known as Venetian crystal, a material that is produced in small batches from a mix of local silica sand, ash, and other materials including limestone and coloring additives. Each glass batch is melted in a furnace at temperatures of over 1,400 degrees Celsius, removed from the furnace, and then blown, molded, etched, or sculpted into the desired shape or design. Barovier & Toso glass has always been handcrafted using these traditional techniques, most of which are little known or understood outside the glassmaking community. Here we profile some of the objects they have made as well as the designers who have worked with the brand along with some processes and techniques they have invented or employed to manufacture glass items. Lenti Ercole Barovier invented numerous new techniques for making and decorating glass. Among his most inventive and original designs are his Lenti series of vases, bowls, and lamps, beginning in the early 1940s, for which he reinterpreted the ancient technique of making cased or dual-layer glass — here layers of glass in contrasting colors are combined. For his Lenti series, Ercole Barovier began with a thin layer of inner glass in colors onto which he attached thick, convex, lens-like semi-circular bubbles or glass (lenti in Italian means lenses) in which exploded gold leaf or gold flakes are suspended. The casing creates magnificent and varying optical effects. Top: Designed by Ercole Barovier as part of his 1940s “Lenti” series, a cylindrical blown glass vase of clear and verdigris-colored glass with applied hemisphere- shaped “lenti” (lenses) infused with flakes of gold leaf. From Società Antiquaria on Incollect. Bottom: A marvelous example of the Lenti technique, also from the 1940 Lenti series, this sparkling pendant light has a deep bowl decorated in cascading bands of lenti, with a decorated stem and canopy that mirrors the bowl shape. From soyun k. at The Gallery at 200 Lex Powered by Incollect.