I dialed Seguso Viro and was immediately put through to Giampaolo. I introduced myself and said I would like to come and talk to him.
“It would be my pleasure,” he replied. We made an appointment for the following week.
In the meantime, I did some inquiring, and the first thing I discovered was that Muranese families had a reputation for feuding. Glassblowers had been living on Murano since 1291, when Doge Pietro Gradenigo forced them to move there from Venice because of the danger of fire, and also to confine them in a kind of protective ghetto where their glassmaking secrets would remain unknown to competitors in the outside world. Seven hundred years of living in such close proximity might have had something to do with the quarrelsome nature of the Murano breed.
“The Muranese are clever people,” Anna Venini told me, “but they are a little bit mad.” Signora Venini was speaking with special insight and a measure of detachment, having worked at the Venini glass factory on Murano for more than twenty years, having published books on the history of glass, and having been the daughter of Paolo Venini, one of the great glassmakers of the twentieth century and a rarity in that he was
not
originally from Murano; he started out as a lawyer in Milan. “But the Muranese are generous,” she said. “When they accept you, you are really accepted.”
Signora Venini’s daughter, Laura de Santillana, an artist who lived in Venice and worked in Murano, where her modernist glass sculptures were executed, shared her mother’s fond ambivalence. “Muranese families always fight,” she said. “Terrible people! Awful! They’ve barricaded themselves inside their island culture. The Muranese consider themselves completely independent from Venice. They have their own Grand Canal, their own basilica, and their own noble families.”
According to the glass historian Rosa Barovier, who is herself a member of a long-established Murano glassmaking family, the departure of Giampaolo Seguso was not the first rupture to occur in the Seguso dynasty.
“Archimede himself split off from his own brothers,” she said. “He also fought with
his
father, who had earlier fought with
his
father. For the Segusos, business is of the greatest importance; sometimes it takes precedence over family. But the Muranese have glass in their blood. They are sustained by the excitement of it. It’s been noticed that in August, when the glassworks close, they become physically ill.
“Gino and Giampaolo Seguso both have a passion for glass,” Rosa Barovier went on, “but they are polar opposites. Gino is a traditionalist; he feels safest with the classic designs. Giampaolo is more daring and creative. He’s using his father’s designs as a base and going off in new directions.”
I took the vaporetto back to Murano. This time, instead of walking to the left when I got off, I turned right. Giampaolo Seguso’s factory, Seguso Viro, was on the opposite side of the island from Vetreria Artistica Archimede Seguso.
A receptionist led me down a corridor, through a courtyard, past several flats of crated glass objects, into a spacious, modern, well-lit furnace room. Two flights of steel steps rose from the factory floor to Seguso’s office. Two long tables were covered with glass bowls, bottles, and vases, each in a different pattern or glassblowing technique.
Giampaolo Seguso was wearing a cardigan sweater and, looking at me over his half glasses, invited me to sit down across from him at his desk by a window. He gestured to his gray hair.
“I look gray on the outside,” he said with a broad smile, “but inside, I am the black sheep of the family.”
I took this opening remark to be a sign that he intended to be candid. Before I had a chance to ask a question, he continued, speaking slowly and choosing his words with great care.
“I am the son of Archimede Seguso, the greatest master glassmaker of the past century. The most difficult thing in my life has been to be his son. He’s a great man. A man of silence. He taught us not to
say,
but to
do,
everything. He lived in a period when it was not possible for him to have a good education. I think that is one of the reasons he and I had difficulties communicating. I could not make him understand who I was, and so at a certain moment in my life, I decided to cut the umbilical cord.”
“How did that come about?” I asked.
“Over a period of time, I began to have business disagreements with my brother. Then, three years ago, I gave myself a big fiftieth-birthday party on the Lido, where I live, and invited my parents, my relatives, and my friends. I presented each person with a small glass egg, and I said, ‘The egg is a symbol of life, of the infinite, of rebirth. It is also a symbol of surprise.’ Then, addressing my parents, I said, ‘I gave you my first fifty years. The surprise is that the second half will belong to me. I want to start to be the owner of my life.’ I was not very tactful when I said that. My parents were very upset.”
“I’ve been told that you trademarked your father’s name without telling him,” I said. “Is that true?”
Giampaolo nodded. “Yes,” he said. “But . . . if I have a knife in my hand, it doesn’t mean I’m a killer. I registered the name in order to keep my father’s legacy intact. I felt that after his death, the only glass sold under his name should be his. I had proposed starting a new line of glass under a different name—perhaps Archimede Seguso II, or the Successors of Archimede Seguso, or something else. But my brother wanted to keep everything under the name Archimede Seguso, even glass designed and made by others after he died. That would turn the signature of a great artist into a brand name, and its meaning would be diluted. I trademarked the name in the hope of preventing that from happening.”
I could see a certain logic in that, but I was still mystified by Giampaolo’s attempt to have his father declared mentally incompetent and removed as head of the company. I asked him about it.
“That was a purely legal maneuver,” he said. “When I left, I wanted to be compensated for the thirty years I had put into the company. I asked my father to buy out my share, but he refused. Then I said, ‘Well, at least give me a couple of retail shops, so I can earn some money while I start my new life.’ I had intended to write books about glass, but in order to do that, I had to have a way of making a living. When we could not agree on my compensation, I realized I would have to sue the company. But that would mean suing my father, and I could never have done that. If I could persuade a judge to pronounce him mentally incapacitated, however, and appoint my brother in his place, then I would be suing my brother when I sued the company.”
I was not sure how declaring one’s father mentally unfit to run his own business could be viewed as preferable to filing a financial claim against him, but I let it pass.
“Have you made any effort to get in touch with your parents since you went off on your own?”
“The first year, I sent flowers to my mother with a card for their wedding anniversary. She returned the flowers, and a couple of days later, I received a letter. My card was inside the envelope, unopened. The note to me said, ‘You know why.’”
“Have your children also been affected by your break with your family?” I asked.
“Yes, they have. My parents refused to see them. They rejected them in different ways.”
This, then, was a dynastic rupture of sweeping proportion. Giampaolo spoke with very little emotion, but there was a heaviness in his words that betrayed a profound sense of pain.
“Where were you the night of the Fenice fire?”
“I was at home on the Lido,” he said. “My son called from New York and asked what was happening. I didn’t know. I went outside to the lagoon and saw the red sky. Then I went in and turned on the TV and began to cry. I did not call my parents. By that time, I had no connection.”
“What became of your plan to write books on the history of glass?”
“Without an income, it was not possible. I decided to go into business for myself, and I started Seguso Viro. I had to sell property in order to do it, which gives you an idea of the intensity of my passion for glass. I have three sons. They are all in the business with me. The company belongs to them. Two work here in Murano with me, and the third runs our showroom in New York.
“For a long time, I had felt that glassmaking in Murano had grown stale. In the period from 1930 through the 1950s, we had great, innovative glassmakers in Murano: Ercole Barovier, Alfredo Barbini, Napoleone Martinuzzi, Paolo Venini, my father. It was a time of planting, sowing. Then, from the 1960s to the 1990s it was a season of harvest without planting anything new. Now Murano finds itself with gray, dark fields, and they ask why. The challenge is to find new ways of using the old techniques. And that is what we are trying to do here.”
“Can you show me some examples?” I asked.
“I can show you many.” Giampaolo rose from his chair and led me over to the table covered with dozens of glass objects.
“The glass on this table represents all the techniques I learned from my father, from my uncles, and by myself. It is a re-creation of what the Seguso dynasty of Murano has done over a period of fifty years. There are a hundred and fifty designs, and for each one I’ve made a limited edition of ninety-nine. My idea is to find patrons who will buy full sets of a hundred and fifty pieces and give them to museums as research and to preserve and promote the myth of Murano glass.”
I was struck by the paradox. “It’s a bit ironic,” I said, “that first you have an angry break with your father and then you painstakingly compile an homage to him.”
“But my father is a great man,” Giampaolo said. “I’ll show you three examples that illustrate how we have documented his work and at the same time made steps into the future.”
He picked up a tear-shaped vase in clear glass with a long, thin neck. Inside the vase, a slightly twisted membrane of glass divided it into two chambers. A white spiderweb made of filaments of white glass was embedded in the glass divider.
“This is an example of the filigree technique, which was invented in Murano in 1527,” Giampaolo said. “In the 1950s, my father created new effects with it that were recognized by glass historians as the first original contribution since the Renaissance. So this vase is about our past, and yet it does have two innovations. The double-chambered effect is one, and the use of the filigree in the internal piece of glass, rather than in the outside wall of the vase, is the other. This vase was designed by my son Gianluca. He’s the twenty-third generation of the Seguso dynasty.”
Giampaolo next picked up a round bowl with black filigree swirling around the bottom half and white filigree on the top. “This is a technique called
incalmo,
which is the joining together of two hemispherical pieces of blown glass exactly the same diameter. It takes two glassblowers to do it, and it must be done while the glass is white-hot. Throughout the history of glassmaking, the two parts of
incalmo
glass have always been joined in a straight line. Here the connection is irregular and has a wavy effect. So this bowl has a little of the old in it and a little of the new.
“Finally this one.” He handed me a vase that had fine threads of black filigree in bands reminiscent of the lines in sheet music, running horizontally in irregular waves and swirls. The lines were mingled with gossamer streams of transparent orange. Giampaolo had designed the vase himself and named it “Vivaldi” after the red-haired Venetian composer Antonio Vivaldi.
“This vase represents a step into our future,” he said. “The orange filigree is made up of sixteen shades of transparent red and orange. Transparent filigree has never been seen before. The effect is original. It is very contemporary.”
The vase was exquisite. The exceptional lightness and grace of its filigree gave it a feeling of motion. A series of irregular lumps of smooth glass running up one side of the exterior created a varied texture and a sensuous play of light. Seguso was clearly very proud of it.
“Did you blow this vase yourself?” I asked.