Archive Stories

For Marcantonio, art and business aren’t just connected; they are essentially the same thing. This intuition – initially just an underlying assumption in most of his work as Laguna~B’s artistic director and CEO – fully formed this June, as his team started a second phase in the archival process – sorting through tons of material he created since he first started approaching the company in 2013.
 
Marta Dell’Era, our archivist, collected more than 500 extra-large paper sheets (33 x 48 cm) that Marcantonio had filled over the years with colorful sketches, drawings, and written notes – a miscellanea of ideas of different viability levels. The outsized format is perfect for Marcantonio’s streams of consciousness, which mix the real and the fantastic, business and art – and work better with fewer limitations.

While Marie turned a functional, everyday object into a work of art, Marcantonio has always made sure that not just the glassware but every aspect of its communication and marketing was approached from an artistic perspective. And the same goes for his sketching process. The recovered papers, carefully analyzed and sorted, have been accommodated in one massive gray box that now lies in a corner of our office, ready to be fed with new scribbled paper daily. Flipping through the sheets, even the business plans look like creative concepts. One shows a comic strip representing Marcantonio’s idea for his little furnace at Carlo Pitau’s in Murano, where he would create experimental, one-off, sculptural drinking glasses. The characters and the scene look chaotic but expressive. Crazy, unrealistic ideas – including the concept for a “Laguna~B Island”  – are presented as actual projects. Sometimes, they erupt amidst business annotations, like a spinning table for tequila shots, popping up among Marcantonio’s management notes. In the gray box, one can also find the inception of actual strategies and projects: An unusually neat folder titled “Lampadario” includes Nature di Luce’s first sketches, from when a living chandelier thriving with plant life indoors was no more than a fancy idea.

30 years ago, Marie, too, used to fill her notebooks – tiny and carefully arranged – with notes and drawings of the most disparate kinds. Mainly, it was glassware – tumblers in various shapes and dimensions, carafes, and other undefined free-flow shapes – but her sketching wasn’t limited to that. Sometimes, she jotted down authors’ names on her reading list or drafted little portraits of her sons. She designed light fixtures, fictional installations, or tiny figurines and scenes like the one below, a petite watercolor she painted in 1977 on a paper scrap.

On one page, dated Novembre 14, 2006, she noted three things she considered worth remembering – “Marc Augé, Les non-lieux (lieux de passage); Patrick Bouchain - Architecture; René Schérer - Travaux sur l’hospitalité.” – and commented, “Comment survivre à une trop grande beauté? – How to survive enormous beauty?” Upon an attentive reading of apparently careless notes, we learn that Marie’s curiosity extended way beyond glassware and that her interests were incredibly broad, from architecture to psychology, from art to philosophy, religions, food, and you name it.

 

As we know from her friends’ accounts and the books in her home-studio, Marie’s work was deeply influenced and inspired by art. Her 1996 Calder catalog is worn out from consultation and became the reference for a series of floating sculptures Marcantonio created in 2022 using cotissi. The artworks – which have remained prototypes – are just one of the company’s artistic explorations and experiments. However, they clearly show how, at Laguna~B, things are rarely made for the sake of business and profit. Rather, self-expression often prevails. And that might not always be a good thing, business-wise. “Art means being able to elicit emotions. And there’s an emotion behind everything we do, every decision, every strategy. What we do isn’t always rational. Many decisions have been taken based on intuition and instinct, and not everything turned out to be right,” Marcantonio told me. At least, he says, “It’s authentic.” 

Scrolling down the digital archive we started a few months ago with Promemoria (you can now access it by filling out this form), Laguna~B’s universe appears as a vivid collage, a chaotic ensemble where the utopia and the reality, the past and the future, constantly intermingle, somehow resulting in a coherent, powerful vision. “I never take anything for granted. I constantly challenge the existing and do my best to improve the world,” Marcantonio said. But how would his ideal world be? “More just, and more focussed on people’s identities and passions.” Yes, it is incredibly corny. But it’s genuine: Laguna~B is mainly fueled by dreams. Some might be plain fantasies leading to nothing but abstract concepts. Others might turn into something great. Just like the dream of inviting international, young artists to Murano – bringing fresh energy and creativity in a notoriously aging and traditional context – turned into Autonoma Next, a residency program whose fourth edition ended just today.

In a note from 2022 titled “Mission,” Marcantonio scribbled, in a childish handwriting:

 

“We are Art; 
Close your eyes / open them again
Do you see the same thing?”

 

Imagine it’s 1994. It’s June. You’re wearing your oversized denim shirt, your thick, heavy red hair pulled back into a ponytail. A long, loose necklace made of glass beads embellishes your freckled decollté. The day is sunny, and the air is calm. Ivy covers the Palazzo’s facade, overlooking the courtyard; the adjacent wall is wrapped in blooming wisteria. Standing in the garden early in the afternoon, you feel enveloped in a quiet, lazy atmosphere. So you walk out of the garden through the old, massive wooden door, following the buzzing voices of strollers and tourists from the nearby square. A few steps into the campiello ‘dei Squelini’ – as the square is called – occupying a popular corner on the left, there’s your friend’s boutique. She sells beautiful glass artworks and is the best in town. A few weeks before, your glasses, too, appeared for sale in its colorful windows.

 

You’re looking at the store, just a few steps from the entrance. Then you blink. And what you see now is entirely different. It’s all glass, steel, and white putty. It’s not at all like what you were looking at only a few seconds back. It’s a bit shocking. But then you notice that some of your glasses are still there, mixed with others, and exhibited in a funny way.

During the archiving process, one finding struck us particularly. A fountain-like structure stands out in a sketch recovered from a folder that includes Marie’s 1994 correspondence with architect Olivier Vedrine. The sketched fountain – likely conceived as an original display for Marie’s tumblers – looks strikingly similar to the ‘Fountain of Glasses,’ the installation Marcantonio created as a window display for our store, Spazio. Because “The glasses look better wet.” In an attached letter, Marie, who had started her small glassware business only a few months before, seems puzzled at receiving this unrequested project for a brick-and-mortar store she didn't envision at the time. She sent it back, a bit irritated. What would she have thought of the running fountain that regularly wets her designs in that shop that now brings her own company’s name? I think she would have loved it.

 

Marcantonio and Marie’s papers contain successful ideas, one-time experiments, and failed projects alike. But who cares? That’s all part of keeping the vibe – and the legacy – alive.