Storie di fabbriche. Storie di famiglie. Fratelli Toso

Curated by Chiara Squarcina and Caterina Toso

The Fratelli Toso glassworks, founded in 1854 on the initiative of the six Toso brothers, was one of the most renowned such firms in the artistic panorama of Murano in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 2024 it celebrated its 170th anniversary. Through the years and generations, the Toso family, with their varied gifts and skills as master glassmakers, technicians, designers and managers, have ensured the success of a firm that has constantly innovated and renewed itself, while always remaining a family business. It has achieved this partly through partnerships with external artists and designers.

For this special anniversary, Fratelli Toso presents itself again with a retrospective of its finest artistic output of the 20th century, recounted through the work of its artistic directors and designers and with a particular concern for one of the staples of its production: the murrina. The development of its murrine over time, the partnerships with important artists, the contributions of designers and master glassmakers who have shaped the artistic and productive development of the business: all this is narrated through the glass exhibits and the archival materials fully preserved by the family.

Original sketches, studies, photographs and documents are a fundamental resource for rediscovering this history. Until World War I, the production focused on models in Stile Antico and Stile Moderno, and the famous series of the Murrini, Fenicio and Floreali, not to mention collaborations with internationally renowned artists such as Hans Stoltenberg Lerche. This was followed by the wonderful series of small artefacts in murrina from the 1920s and the production in pulegoso glass of the 1930s. The phase of the company’s greatest artistic success, however, came between the 1940s and late 1960s, thanks above all to the work of the designers Ermanno Toso and Pollio Perelda, and the skill of glass masters such as Licio Zuffi and Vittorio Ferro.

Bottiglia Nerox a Petoni, Ermanno Toso, 1962

Ermanno was artistic director of Fratelli Toso from the late 1940s to the 1960s. He was responsible for the renewal of the classic murrina, the signature piece of the glassworks from the post-war period on: masterpieces with a modern aesthetic, but always closely bound up with the historic family tradition. Pollio Perelda, designer for the glassworks from 1948 to 1964, contributed a series of works with more abstract motifs in which his background as a painter was clearly visible.

Nor should we forget the work of Rosanna Toso, the only woman with a managerial role in the firm’s history, capable of designing wonderfully elegant and modern works in murrina, as well as becoming the perfect interpreter of the glass minimalism of the 1970s. To her and her cousins, the architects Giusto and Renato Toso, we owe the great artistic renewal of the firm’s production from the 1960s on with ornaments, tableware and lighting. Their output gave ample space to crystal glass and monochromatic glass, often conceived as veritable sculptures. From decade to decade, it renewed production, reaching peaks of outstanding stylistic and technical excellence to keep abreast of the contemporary market, confirming that Fratelli Toso is one of the leaders in the history of Murano glass.

Admission to the exhibition from 12 July to 24 November 2025, with the Museum’s hours and ticket.

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Images:
Set of murrina vases, 1900 – 1915
Bottiglia Nerox a Petoni, Ermanno Toso, 1962. Biennale d’arte di Venezia, 1962. Collection Lutz Holz, Berlino (DE).
Nerox oro, Ermanno Toso, 1952. Collection Fratelli Toso.