Submerged in Sommerso glass

It's strange how things work. Sometimes you don't find a single Sommerso vase for months, sometimes you find three on the same day! I hadn't seen any Murano Sommerso vases in ages, and suddenly I find SIX pieces in less than a month time. So weird. But obviously you don't hear me complaining, as they are beautiful!

Here's the thing: sometimes I wish I started collecting these glass Murano vases instead of collecting West German pottery. The clean lines, the strong colours, the way the light falls through a row of them in the window sill. Just stunning. 

Sommerso is Italian for Submerged. And that's a pretty great description of what these vases actually are: a colour of glass submerged in another colour of glass. Sommerso vases, as far as I know, always have at least two layers of glass: a coloured layer on the inside, and a clear or a very light coloured layer on top. (And for those of you who are now thinking: "but I have a Sommerso vase in my collection that is entirely PINK, and PINK ONLY", darn it, I knew they would be there, but couldn't find them on Google!). Many of the vases have more than one coloured layer, I've seen vases with as many as three or four colours. The extra layers mostly seem to be yellow or blue, but I've seen a few with a light purple or green layer. 

I'm not entirely sure why they use these colours. I can imagine that it's because they show the main colour of the item in the best possible way. Another reason could be because of the contrast with the most used colours of Murano Sommerso glass: red, green and blue.

Fun fact: sometimes the yellow layer glows in the dark! Now, I don't own a black light, so I can't test this out, but there are vases that used uranium glass for the yellow layer.

The particular vases I'm talking about in this post are clean lined: diamond shaped or square. There are also bowls and ash trays to be found. They are often described online as Mandruzzato style, or designed by Flavio Poli. I never really knew what that meant. Were those makers/designers? Or was Mandruzzato an Italian term for something, like Sommerso is?

So, I did a little bit of digging. All the following information comes from other websites, so please keep in mind that the internet is not as reliable as well researched books. But I have put quite a bit of time in this, and they are good sources so I promise it will be a worthwhile read*

Mandruzzato is the name of a glass making family. Mandruzzato glass works was started in 1956 on the isle of Murano by Luigi Mandruzzato. In 1965 his son Gianfranco joined the firm. From 2000 his son Alessandro took over the company. (sources: here, here, here). The company website http://www.mandruzzato.ve.it/ sadly seems to be no longer functioning, but Alessandro's website is:

http://www.alessandromandruzzato.com/

They specialized in these layered, faceted pieces. Based on a forum posts byAlessandro in 2009, it looks like they made these vases for quite a while.  Older pieces have an amber layer, later pieces a yellow layer. And apparently the outer layer is crystal! I never knew this.

One of the vases I found last week had the original Mandruzzato label! It even shows some of the shapes that were available.  In two forum posts (post 1, post 2) Alessandro mentions some names: the diamond shaped vase is called S. Marco. The general name of this line of pieces seems to be Molato (bevelled in English).

I have seen a lot of other labels as well. Some examples are: VAM, VMP. I'm not sure if these were generic Murano labels, or other factories who copied the design by Gianfranco Mandruzzato. One of the labels I have seen was from Campanella, a company that mostly made millefiori glass.  In addition to these faceted (copies?), they made another type ofvase that I find very pretty, with two smooth and two textured edges. Confusingly enough, these are often also described to Mandruzzato in the online stores. I couldn't find out if if Mandruzzato also made these, or if that is just a later erroneous attribution.

Finally, I want to come back to Flavio Poli. He was a designer for the company Seguso. They did make Sommerso vases, but in a much more organic shape. The "bow" vase is one of the designs that is attributed to him. One of his vases is included in the MoMA! But it does look like he has nothing to do with the facetted vases.

To make things even more complex, companies from other countries made similar kind of vases: Strömbergshyttan made some organic Sommerso vases, but also a very similar square model in earthy tones. The German company Harz Kristall made a sort of up side down version in dark blue and red, that are very similar. Pavel Hlava's glass vases are not identical, but again, very similar.

Wow, that was a lot of info! It is a very confusing subject. For me the conclusion is that I think they are all beautiful, but you shouldn't necessarily believe the classification you see in webstores. I will go back to my current listings, and update them with all this new info!

If you have more information to share on this subject, I would love to hear it! You can send me a message, or leave a comment below.

*Mark Hill, when will you write a book on this subject? I would totally buy it!