Adonis 7360 13 Chandelier in Glass, by Marcel Wanders from Barovier&Toso

The creative force behind some of the most inventive furniture and interiors of the past 30 years, the Amsterdam-based Marcel Wanders continues to take his work in new directions.

Wanders, who launched his design career in 1994 as cofounder, with Renny Ramakers and Gijs Bakker, of Droog, has since built an international brand of his own, Marcel Wanders, embodying his sense that design should be playful, romantic, verging on surreal and — when there’s a choice between the two — over- rather than understated. Moooi, a furniture brand he cofounded with Revised’s Casper Vissers, was established in 2001.

Wanders's style might best be defined as contemporary Rococo. Individual pieces that have reached design icon status include his Knotted chair (1995–96), an international breakthrough for Wanders that he made of aramid-fiber cord for Cappellini; his Skygarden pendant lamp for FLOS (2007); his monumental Calvin floor lamp (also 2007). Then there’s the Happy Hour chandelier (2005), created by Wanders with choreographer Nanine Linning, which is part a design object, part a performance in which a “dancing angel” hangs from the center of the fixture, serving little spoons of chocolate mousse and champagne flutes to the people below.

Wanders’s studio collaborations include creating bespoke hides with leather artisans from Bill Amberg Studio and designing crystal game boards for Maison Baccarat, in addition to the handcrafted Nightbloom lamps for Lladró. Wanders is also known for designing what might be called experiential spaces — interiors imbued with his design ethos, as in the eclectic and theatrical Mondrian South Beach hotel, in Miami (2008), and the Andaz Amsterdam Prinsengracht hotel (2012).

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Partnerships come and go within the community of glass-making artisans on the Venetian island of Murano, where business relationships seem as complex as the shifting alliances in the notoriously acrimonious Italian parliament. Formed in 1942 by members of families with centuries of experience in the craft, Barovier&Toso has proven to be one of the most enduring and prosperous Italian glass manufactories of recent decades. Under the nearly 50-year artistic directorship of cofounder Ercole Barovier (1889–1974), the company created buoyant traditional pieces such as chandeliers, sconces and other lighting fixtures, and it pioneered an array of innovative modernist glass designs with bold colors, patterns and surfaces.

The Barovier dynasty began in 1295, when Jacobello Barovier, mentioned in historical documents as a master glassblower, began pinching, cutting, blowing and twisting a molten mixture of sand and minerals into incandescent works of art. It remained entirely family-owned until the mid-20th century, when it merged with another glassworks to become Barovier&Toso.

To appeal to gentler, more conservative tastes, Barovier&Toso produced a range of lilting, sinuous lighting pieces that are often described as embodying “Liberty Style” — the Italian term for Art Nouveau, taken from the name of famed London department store Liberty & Co., which promoted 19th-century organic textile designs and Arts and Crafts-style furniture in the manner of William Morris. The hallmarks of the style in Barovier&Toso works are elements of glass in the shape of thick leaves, fronds and flower petals, deployed along with other naturalistic ornament in sconces, pendants and chandeliers.

Ercole Barovier began his personal aesthetic transition toward modernism in the 1930s with his Primavera series of vases and animal sculptures — idiosyncratic milky-white and clear glass filled with tiny bubbles and hairline interior fissures that he produced for Artisti Barovier, a firm headed by his father and uncle. Later, with Barovier&Toso, he would explore such novel styles as the mosaic-like Pezzato glass; fluid Spiral patterns; the pebbly textured Barbarico line and the complex, layered and highly colored abstractions of the Oriente series of vases and bowls.

Traditional or modern, Barovier&Toso — still under family control — has produced one of the finest and most diverse catalogues of Murano glass in the last 100 years.

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