STORIE DI FABBRICHE. STORIE DI FAMIGLIE
Donazione Carlo e Giovanni Moretti 1958-2013

From 6 December 2024 to 30 June 2025
Murano, Glass Museum, Spazio Ex Conterie

Curated by
Chiara Squarcina
Mauro Stocco

The exhibition presents to the public for the first time most of the important and substantial donation of 453 works by the Carlo Moretti company, added to the Museo del Vetro in 2020. Founded on 30 October 1958 by Carlo and Giovanni Moretti, two young people from Murano from a family of glass entrepreneurs, Carlo Moretti has always stood out by the creation of objects in crystal – stemware, tumblers and containers for various purposes – notable for its constant quest for pure and restrained lines, combined with technical innovation and development of the most suitable instruments of fabrication.

Carlo Moretti, Calici da Collezione, 2010. Ph. Sergio Sutto

The company began production by concentrating on the manufacture of transparent cut glass and coloured glassware decorated with gold motifs, abandoning the family’s traditional output. In the early 1960s, Carlo Moretti began production of the first series of two-tone glassware (inner milky and outer coloured) and later the successful series of Satinati made for the Bloomingdale’s department stores, New York. This was the start of the process of establishing the company in foreign markets. Carlo Moretti’s stylistic hallmark is the adoption of simple and basic forms and restrained lines in stemware and bowls, consisting mostly of geometries based on cylinders and spheres.

The 1970s were the firm’s most innovative period, expressed also in technical research aimed at improving the quality of the raw materials and the desire to affirm a precise expressive vocabulary. In recent years, the company has revived traditional Murano crystal, which has become Carlo Moretti’s veritable hallmark, identified with the elegance and lightness of its products. Then the firm created extraordinary projects such as the Ottagonale glass in 1974 and Ovale in 1976.

Carlo Moretti, Giose, series I piccoli, 2006. Ph. Studio Pointer

A turning point in its range of forms came during the 1980s with the glasses that most fully identify the company’s production and its stylistic hallmark: restrained objects in crystal, of great refinement, often finished only by milling, such as the Millemolature and Bande molate series of 1984. Also on display will be the famous series of collectable stemware, Calici da collezione, launched for Christmas 1990, the result of an intuition by Giovanni Moretti. Renewed every year in colours, forms and patterns, they immediately achieved great commercial success.

Among the more strictly artistic creations, the Monolite project also dates from the 1990s. These are heavy glass sculptures inspired by Manhattan’s urban nightscape, produced with a special technique of fusion in the glass melting furnace. Much of the output in the 2000s is characterised by coloured glass. Each item is signed by hand with a diamond wheel, so making it unmistakable and unique.

The exhibition will be an opportunity to retrace in a timely and exhaustive way the historical development of the Carlo Moretti company and the evolution of its successful production from the 1960s until the present.

Admission to the exhibition from 6 December 2024 to 30 June 2025, with the Museum’s hours and ticket.