2019.03.01 把穆拉诺重新放在地图上的设计师们

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VENICE
The designers putting Murano back on the map
Simon Willis meets the glassmakers who are recreating an ancient industry for modern times



Mar 1st 2019
BY SIMON WILLIS

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The island of Murano is not what it used to be. For centuries this dot of land 2km from Venice was the centre of the global glass industry. Its densely packed furnaces churned out chandeliers, vases, goblets and gewgaws, from colourful clowns and twirling dancers to prancing horses and pouting fish. As recently as the 1970s, there were more than 800 furnaces doing a brisk trade on the island.

But times have changed. An influx of cheaper glass from China put many Venetian companies out of business. And many consumers no longer wanted the elaborately shaped, lurid pieces that many Murano blowers specialised in. Today there are fewer than 80 furnaces left, and many of the island’s old industrial buildings wear for-sale signs.


From left to right “Hollow” by Dan Yeffet, from £4,800. “Sleeve” by John Pawson, from £800. “NASSE” by Marco Zito and BTM, from £3,000. “Calliope” by Marcel Wanders, from £800. All available from WonderGlass
Necessity, though, is the mother of invention. “Murano seemed to be in terminal decline,” says David Landau, a Swiss collector who lives in Venice, where he founded Le Stanze del Vetro, a museum dedicated to Venetian glass on San Giorgio Maggiore, another of Venice’s islands. “But Murano people have realised that if they close themselves off, it’s not going to work. There has been a slow but inexorable reopening of Murano to the world.”


“Tower” (2017) by Tony Cragg Photo: Francesco Allegretto, Courtesy the artist and Berengo Studio
One morning in December I took a water taxi to the island with Maurizio Mussati and his son Christian. Italians who are based in London, they founded a company called WonderGlass in 2013, which commissions international designers to create pieces in collaboration with Murano’s glassblowers. The first person they turned to was Nao Tamura, a young Japanese designer who they hired as WonderGlass’s first art director. Tamura was an unlikely candidate for the job: she had never worked with glass and had never been to Venice. But her inexperience proved valuable. “I had a fresh eye for it,” she says.


Her eye was drawn to the city itself. “I was in Venice for the first time, you know, and there’s the water and the reflection. It was like there was another city under the water, and I was like a child, it was so beautiful.” She set about synthesising that atmosphere. “I made colour charts of Venice, and I asked a blower to make that kind of subtle colour. Venice has a beautiful palette of colours and I wanted to use the colour of the lagoon, that beautiful blue-green, and also the gradation, which to me was very beguiling.” The result was Flow[T], a range of glass pendants resembling water droplets at different stages of their fall, with a horizon line running through their centre.

The restraint and subtlety of Tamura’s work set the tone. It has been followed by pieces such as Zaha Hadid’s “Luma”, an elegantly fluted pendant in pale grey which hangs from the ceiling like a giant upturned wine glass, and Cristina Celestino’s “Physalis”, a beautifully organic bud made from sunset-pink Pulegoso glass, with a distinctive rough surface created by thousands of tiny bubbles. More recently WonderGlass has moved into objects and furniture, cast in a factory near Venice, like the series of candy-coloured vessels and ornaments by the French designers Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, launched in 2018, and “Melt”, a range of transparent glass furniture by the Japanese firm Nendo, unveiled at this year’s Cologne furniture fair. WonderGlass has put the ancient skills of Venice’s glassmakers to new uses.

Most of Murano’s remaining glassblowers now make tat for tourists. The importance of outside influence is not lost on those who want to do something different. Dario Stellon spent two decades as a blower at Salviati, one of Murano’s oldest glass companies, before being laid off. In 2016 he started a new venture called btm, which stands for Break the Mould. The firm’s mission is twofold: to make its own products, and to collaborate with companies such as WonderGlass. Without the input of foreign designers, Stellon fears that local skills will atrophy. People from the world of design “push you to your limits”, he says: “If you close yourself off and do fish all day, that’s all you can do.”



“Gartenzwerge” (2017) by Thomas Schütte Photo: Trevor Good, Courtesy the artist and carlier | gebauer
Arguably, the person pushing these limits furthest is Adriano Berengo. He arrived on Murano almost 30 years ago, bringing local artists to the island to work in glass. More recently he has been working with “blue-chip artists”, as he calls them, such as Jake and Dinos Chapman, Ai Weiwei, Tony Cragg and Thomas Schütte. Like Tamura, many of them have never worked in glass before. Instead of transferring their ideas from one medium to another, Berengo says, they have to “begin to think in glass”. Some have failed. Tracey Emin’s “Docket”, a feline sculpture made in 2013, could have been crafted from anything. Others have adapted beautifully. Cragg’s “Untitled” (2015), a series of quirky abstract sculptures in transparent glass, captures the liquid quality of the material. He has followed it with a collection of totems formed from glass blocks, like tottering towers of ice cubes.


Having imported designers and artists, Murano is now beginning to export their creations. Berengo has exhibited their work in London, New York and Stockholm as part of an exhibition of glass art called “Glasstress”. In 2020, it will travel to St Petersburg, Istanbul and Beijing. This year Venice will host its third Glass Week, a jamboree of exhibitions and events organised by David Landau, among others. “What is unique to Murano is the richness of its tradition, and the ability of its glassblowers to command almost any technique,” Landau says. “The spirit of experimentation that had gone astray ten years ago seems to have come back.”■

main photograph baker & evans




威尼斯
把穆拉诺重新放在地图上的设计师们
西蒙-威利斯会见了正在为现代社会重新创造一个古老产业的玻璃制造商。



2019年3月1日
作者：西蒙-威利斯


穆拉诺岛已今非昔比。几个世纪以来，这个距离威尼斯2公里的小地方是全球玻璃工业的中心。其密集的熔炉生产出吊灯、花瓶、高脚杯和小玩意，从五颜六色的小丑和旋转的舞者到奔跑的马和撅嘴的鱼。最近，在20世纪70年代，岛上有800多座熔炉在进行活跃的交易。

但时代已经改变。来自中国的廉价玻璃的涌入，使许多威尼斯公司失去了业务。许多消费者不再需要许多穆拉诺吹制者所擅长的形状精致、色彩艳丽的作品。今天，只剩下不到80个熔炉，岛上的许多老工业建筑都挂着出售的牌子。


从左至右 丹-耶菲特的 "空洞"，4800英镑起。John Pawson的 "袖子"，800英镑起。马可-齐托和BTM的 "NASSE"，3000英镑起。Marcel Wanders的 "Calliope"，800英镑起。所有这些都可以从WonderGlass获得。
不过，必要性是发明之母。"居住在威尼斯的瑞士收藏家大卫-兰道说："穆拉诺似乎正在走向衰落，他在威尼斯的另一个岛屿圣乔治马焦雷建立了Le Stanze del Vetro博物馆，专门展示威尼斯玻璃。"但穆拉诺人已经意识到，如果他们把自己封闭起来，那是行不通的。穆拉诺有一个缓慢但不可阻挡的重新向世界开放的过程。"



"塔"（2017年），托尼-克拉格照片。Francesco Allegretto，由艺术家和Berengo工作室提供

12月的一个早晨，我与Maurizio Mussati和他的儿子Christian一起乘坐水上的士前往该岛。他们是常驻伦敦的意大利人，在2013年成立了一家名为WonderGlass的公司，委托国际设计师与穆拉诺的玻璃工匠合作创造作品。他们找的第一个人是田村直，一个年轻的日本设计师，他们聘请她为WonderGlass的第一个艺术总监。田村是一个不太可能的候选人：她从来没有做过玻璃，也没有去过威尼斯。但她的无经验证明了她的价值。她说："我有一双新的眼睛，"她说。


她的目光被这个城市本身所吸引。"我是第一次到威尼斯，你知道，那里有水和倒影。就像水底下有另一个城市，我就像一个孩子，它是如此美丽"。她开始合成这种气氛。"我制作了威尼斯的色彩图，我请一个吹风机制作那种微妙的色彩。威尼斯有一个美丽的调色板，我想使用环礁湖的颜色，那种美丽的蓝绿色，还有那种渐变，对我来说是非常诱人的。结果是Flow[T]，一系列的玻璃吊坠就像处于不同阶段的水滴，其中心有一条地平线穿过。

田村的作品的克制和微妙性奠定了基调。之后的作品包括扎哈-哈迪德的 "Luma"，一个优雅的浅灰色凹槽吊坠，像一个巨大的翻转的酒杯，以及克里斯蒂娜-塞莱斯蒂诺的 "Physalis"，一个美丽的有机花蕾，由日落粉色的Pulegoso玻璃制成，其独特的粗糙表面由成千上万的小气泡构成。最近，WonderGlass已经转向物件和家具，在威尼斯附近的工厂铸造，比如法国设计师Ronan和Erwan Bouroullec在2018年推出的一系列糖果色的容器和装饰品，以及日本公司Nendo在今年科隆家具展上推出的 "Melt"，一系列透明玻璃家具。WonderGlass将威尼斯玻璃制造商的古老技能用于新的用途。

穆拉诺仅存的大部分玻璃工匠现在为游客制作工艺品。对于那些想做不同事情的人来说，外部影响的重要性并没有消失。达里奥-斯泰隆在穆拉诺最古老的玻璃公司之一萨尔维亚蒂（Salviati）做了二十年的吹制工，后来被解雇了。2016年，他创办了一家名为btm的新企业，它代表着打破模具。该公司的任务有两个方面：制造自己的产品，并与WonderGlass等公司合作。没有外国设计师的投入，Stellon担心本地技能会萎缩。来自设计界的人 "把你推向你的极限"，他说："如果你把自己封闭起来，整天做鱼，那就是你能做的一切。"



"Gartenzwerge"（2017年），托马斯-许特照片。Trevor Good，由艺术家和carlier | gebauer提供

可以说，将这些极限推得最远的人是阿德里亚诺-贝伦戈。他在近30年前来到穆拉诺，把当地的艺术家带到岛上从事玻璃工作。最近，他一直在与 "蓝筹艺术家 "合作，正如他所说的那样，例如杰克和迪诺斯-查普曼、艾未未、托尼-克拉格和托马斯-舒特。像田村一样，他们中的许多人以前从未在玻璃上工作过。Berengo说，他们必须 "开始用玻璃思考"，而不是将他们的想法从一种媒介转移到另一种媒介。有些人已经失败了。特蕾西-艾明（Tracey Emin）的 "Docket"，一个2013年制作的猫科动物雕塑，可能是用任何东西制作的。其他作品则适应得很好。克拉格的 "无题"（2015），一系列古怪的透明玻璃抽象雕塑，抓住了材料的液体质量。随后，他又创作了一系列由玻璃块组成的图腾，就像摇摇欲坠的冰块塔。


在引进设计师和艺术家后，穆拉诺现在开始出口他们的作品。Berengo已经在伦敦、纽约和斯德哥尔摩展出了他们的作品，作为名为 "Glasstress "的玻璃艺术展览的一部分。2020年，它将前往圣彼得堡、伊斯坦布尔和北京。今年，威尼斯将举办第三届玻璃周，这是一场由大卫-兰道等人组织的展览和活动的大聚会。兰道说："穆拉诺的独特之处在于其丰富的传统，以及其玻璃工匠能够掌握几乎任何技术，"。"十年前误入歧途的实验精神似乎又回来了。" ■。

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