While Venice has felt the pulse of international trade since the days of Marco Polo, the 13th-century glass house Barovier&Toso has only just now amped up its international roster of designers.
Since the announcement last March of design-forward creative Luca Nichetto’s official appointment as art director, the Murano-based firm has seen the work of its new collaborators come to the global fore, expanding its range of accessories for the home.
The lineup includes Nichetto’s designs like the Profilo ceiling lamp, the Aurora table lamp and Etime, a cubic glass object. But now Spanish-Italian duo García Cumini; Studio Lani, founded by Nigerian Canadian designer Lani Adeoye; French designer Emmanuel Babled; Swedish design studio Claesson Koivisto Rune, and Japanese designer Keiji Ashizawa are expanding the company’s design language.
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Opening the brand to new international perspectives has strengthened Barovier&Toso’s relevance within the global design community, chief executive officer Andrea Signoroni stressed in an interview.
The new lineup has attracted new audiences and demonstrated that innovation and craftsmanship can evolve together without compromising the firm’s identity. “It confirms that our heritage is not a static legacy, but a living source of inspiration for designers from different cultures and generations,” Signoroni said, adding that the firm is focused on adding names from further afield as part of its goals for 2027.
From Nigeria to Tokyo
A unique point of view was evidenced by Adeoye, who won Milan’s 2022 SaloneSatellite award for RemX, an elegant and sculptural walking aid. She contributed her Olori vases to Barovier&Toso, an expression of her Nigerian heritage, in dialogue with Italian artisan practices. Olori draws its name from the Yoruba word meaning “Queen,” a title that embodies authority and identity, she explained. The sinuous design is cinched at the neck by an ornamental necklace of satin-finished beads, a reference to monarchical regalia of ancient times.
The Swedish architectural partnership composed of Mårten Claesson, Eero Koivisto and Ola Rune designed Podio, a family of vases. Meanwhile, Lisbon-based French designer Babled created the Lithos vase, made by running mineral powders through controlled temperatures to create a vessel marked by bubbles and cavities.
Tokyo-based designer and architect Ashizawa contributed Kado, inspired by origami and the art of floral arrangement. Spanish-Italian design studio García Cumini, a creative partnership founded in 2012 by Vicente García Jiménez and Cinzia Cumini, elaborated on antique concepts around the chandelier. The Spanish-Italian duo adapted ornate designs to contemporary lifestyles with Agave, a collection of various styles and sizes modeled after agave leaves. Each “agave” leaf is made with a “rugiada” technique, which involves spreading glass granules over the still-incandescent surface, creating an effect reminiscent of sunlight filtering through the leaves of a Mediterranean plant.
Pioneering a Modern Vision
Nichetto, a Murano native who has a design practice based in both Venice and Stockholm, lists collaborations with design firms like Foscarini, Ginori 1735 and &Tradition. He said that his main goal is to expand Barovier&Toso’s international creativity.
His own design, Profilo, was fashioned as a flurry of orbs — a contemporary reinterpretation of the classic chandelier silhouette for the firm. The production of Profilo was a feat in itself, innovating on old techniques while preserving its antique spirit, Nichetto explained.
“Profilo’s big disc spans 70 centimeters, and achieving that sort of diameter by hand is extremely difficult. That disc is not created using the classical blowing technique but with a centrifuging technique I recall from my childhood, maintaining the same kind of craft perception of hand-blown glass,” he said.
Looking toward the future, Nichetto recognizes that the path forward will be guided by the past. Barovier&Toso’s history culminated in 1455, when Barovier’s descendant Angelo Barovier was granted the exclusive right to produce “Cristallo Veneziano” (Venetian Crystal), and later in the beginning of the 20th century, when the firm began ideating more consumer-facing products. Guided by his own roots, Nichetto wants to propel Murano’s historic glassmaking prowess and Venice’s magical cross-cultural fabric onto a contemporary stage.
“Murano was, at the time of the Serenissima, one of the most important industrial hubs for glassmaking, containing the secrets of glassmaking that allowed Venetians to spread that beauty and know-how on a global level,” he said, noting that the chandelier, made before the invention of the bulb, was influenced by the Middle East with a Byzantine aesthetic.
Nichetto wants to continue that sort of cross-cultural pollination, recruiting creatives from around the world to collaborate with the brand. “One of the things I want to achieve as director is bringing in the knowledge, the heritage and the legacy of Barovier&Toso while shifting the brand to be identified as more than a heritage brand. I want to move the perception of what the next Venetian chandelier will look like in 50 years,” he said.
He’s also been pioneering the production of more retail-oriented products and objects, including portable lamps, that will expand the firm’s distribution channels to complement the bespoke chandelier business.
“This doesn’t mean that we need to become more affordable because Barovier&Toso can never be more affordable in terms of price positioning for obvious reasons,” he said.