Discovering a Love for Sparkling Glassware
“I haven’t read the explanations, if there are any that the psychologists give for the passion for collecting things. But this passion exists; it is a fact. And I admit that I am a victim of this passion. Almost everyone collects something. I collect cava, or champagne, glasses.
I remember very well when I began to collect glasses. It was in Venice, in 1956, that my uncle gave me the idea while sitting at the dinner table in the Piazza San Marco. My father quietly got up and went into an antique shop near Saint Marco’s Cathedral and returned with a beautiful red Murano crystal glass with a golden dauphine in the stem. He gave me the glass and a kiss. The collection had begun.
Learning the Secrets of Crystal
Now, after so many years, I understand why I have continued with such fascination and devotion. Little by little, I learned to love glass and crystal as if it were a live material, translucent and of latent plasticity. And the mere act of holding a glass in my hands remains a pleasure.
The adult collector is quickly called, “expert in the objects that he or she collects.” Nothing could be further from the truth in my case. All that I know about crystal and glassware is the fruit of the explanations and works of true experts, scientists or historians. To them I owe my gratitude.
Perhaps the most extraordinary property of crystal is that its surface can be transformed combining heat and art and a mixture of sand and ashes into one of the most beautiful materials known. Its beauty never appears to be a result of an anticipated calculation. Its form can be designed and controlled, its color created by a percentage of oxides. Beyond this alchemy, there is the quality of the material that defies any prediction. Even more important is the power of decision that the artisan holds. Glass is a material that needs to be turned, blown and molded until it achieves its definitive form. It is in this creation of beauty that man becomes so much involved.
Two Thousand Glasses, Countless Stories
In my collection, numbering around two thousand, there are all types of glasses. They vary in age and color; they are engraved and cut; painted and enameled; simple and ornate; transparent and opaque; molded and blown; antique and modern. Although we are convinced that the ideal glass for drinking cava is transparent crystal and the most suitable shape is the flute or tulip, I believe that in a collection there should be a little bit of everything. I confess that my favorite pieces are those with braided stems or serpentine interiors (perhaps trapped inside for centuries) or those ornate glasses with a white laticinio forming filigree in their stems or in the base,. Those that have a teardrop of air on the knot of the base are my weakness, without forgetting those glasses of green, blue or ruby color from the beginnings of the sixteenth century. These were achieved by the secret chemical mixtures of various countries, each of which have different types of crystals, styles and representative characteristics.
Every Glass Holds a Memory
For years I’ve been roaming through antique shops all over the world. My husband has, with loving patience and graceful generosity, accompanied me the majority of the times. We have searched endlessly for the hard to find glasses in between knick knacks and odds and ends, discovering them, forgotten and lost, in the most unlikely places in the world. It is these glasses, with their unknown history and their romantic toasts, which form my own collection.”