Gaetano Pesce: Five Glassmaking Techniques

Gaetano Pesce has his own way of working with glass. The Italian industrial designer came up with his own technique in the 80s, while he was working with the Glass Experimentation Centre of Marseille (CIRVA). Now, a large part of those objects designed and made between 1988 and 1992 are on display at Five Glassmaking Techniques, an exhibition at the Museo del Vetro di Murano –and also a part of The Venice Glass Week.

The name he gave each of his five techniques, called Pastis, Joliette, Vieux-Port, Pâte de Verre and Plage, provide a hint as to their respective origins: bottles for Pastis, coloured glass beads for Joliette, fragments of coloured glass placed next to each other like little boats for Vieux-Port, powdered glass for Plate and glasses previously processed by the industry for Pâte de Verre.

“As always, in order to evaluate the implementation of his ideas, Peace took care of the first tests himself,” explains Françoise Guichon, one of the curators of the exhibition and the director of CIRVA at the time. “Wearing a city shirt with perfectly starched cu s and protected only with a large glove of reproof material, he held a pistol at arm’s length that red molten glass onto a support placed within the roaring red throat of a wide-open furnace.” Thanks to this curious spirit, the exercises yielded first-time industrial applications, such as the addition of coloured patches in the production of glasses.

The exhibition focuses on the expressive language behind the resulting techniques, and how Pesce was able to turn glass into a vehicle for his formal sensitivity, arriving at unexpected and playful results.

As stated by Gabriella Belli, one of the co-curators along with Chiara Squarcina, “Gaetano Pesce opens the mind and stimulates our imagination, driving us to take action and react to his works, which engage all our senses.”

Five Glassmaking Techniques is open until September 17, 2017