Nason & Moretti Glassware

Glass Tableware from Art Deco to the Compasso d’Oro Award
November 22, 2024 – May 4, 2025

The exhibition recounts forty years of production by Nason & Moretti glass factory, one of the most original Murano glassmakers that, since its foundation in 1923 – with a specific focus on the art of the table and a radically futuristic approach – reinterpreted the traditional forms and techniques of Murano glass in a modern key.

Nason & Moretti services have won over a large audience since the beginning – hence their widespread diffusion today on the antiques market – but also sophisticated collectors, such as Gabriele D’Annunzio, who secured some two-tone glass services for his villa – the Vittoriale, or the Genoese notary Angelo Fasce, who included the Francesca glass service with fluted bowl as an accessory for the L’Autarca table, which he patented in 1936 with the definition “Table containing everything necessary for serving meals” and now exhibited at the Wolfsoniana. This original piece of furniture and its accessories represent the connection that gave rise to the project of the exhibition Nason & Moretti Glassware, curated by Cristina Beltrami, Matteo Fochessati and Anna Vyazemtseva, which through a selection of over a hundred objects, historical drawings and numerous archive documents intends to recount the taste and habits of an era in which the social custom of reception triumphed.

In a period of time that goes from the affirmation of Art Deco in the twenties to the great creative season of the fifties, which for Nason & Moretti also coincides with the awarding of the Compasso d’Oro Award for the Lidia series (1955), the exhibition traces some pages of Italian design, also understood as a mirror of a society that needed a different service for each occasion.

The unfolding of the exhibition inevitably also becomes the path of a taste that from the formal simplicity of the twenties, which focused on the effective play of contrasting colour combinations of glass, passes in the two following decades to the cleanliness of the geometries combined with a transparent glass with indefinable nuances and then, in the fifties, to the collaboration with internationally renowned designers, attested by the conservation of some Nason Moretti services in important international museums, including the MoMa in New York.

The exhibition is accompanied by a large graphic apparatus from the NasonMoretti historical archive – vintage catalogues, photographs and drawings – which further places the objects in their historical and cultural context, revealing the mechanisms of production and promotion of a historic furnace.

The catalogue (published by Sagep, Genoa) includes a text by Matteo Fochessati and Anna Vyazemtseva that contextualizes the production of Nason & Moretti within the eclectic collection of the museum; followed by Cristina Beltrami, who offers a historical analysis of Nason & Moretti and its importance in the international design scene. Moon Cho, a Korean scholar based in Paris who has devoted her research to tableware for years, will provide a specific analysis of the Francesca service, while Alessandro Zannoni, archivist and professor of product design history at the IUAV in Venice, reiterates in his essay the importance of a factory archive which, in the case of design, represents a historical heritage, but also a potential inspiration for designers who are considering a collaboration with this factory that today boasts over 10,000 models and is unrivaled in Venice for the vastness of its color palette built up over the decades and the result of secret recipes.

Exhibition curated by Cristina Beltrami, Matteo Fochessati and Anna Vyazemtseva

Opening

Until March 31: Tuesday to Sunday, 11:00 AM – 5:00 PM

From April 1 to September 30: Tuesday to Friday, 11:00 AM – 6:00 PM; Saturday, Sunday, and holidays, 12:00 PM – 7:00 PM

Closed on Mondays

In the event of a RED hydrogeological alert issued by the Civil Protection, the facility will remain closed, and all scheduled events will be canceled.

Tickets

Full ticket €5

Reduced ticket €4, check here for the list of reductions

Youth (5-18 years) and schools €3

Combined Tickets

Combined Tickets for Nervi Museums

Four museums, daily ticket €10

Wolfsoniana + Modern Art Gallery €8