Pietro Chiesa, coffee table, c. 1934
fueled by a pursuit of how best to marshal light in glass
vessels. A 1966 summation of the thoughts Max Ingrand
expressed in a lecture included, "the world of light is just
beginning and our hope is that all of us may contribute
to its swift and harmonious continuity."
Whatever the larger political events that engulfed the
world in which Fontana Arte existed—and surely the
narrative must have had several tragic chapters—the
firm's design excellence
in everything pertaining to
glass prevailed. Ingrand's
mirror in thick glass sheet
profiled with satin finish
and torn glass patterns,
c. 1960, seems, in its
irregularity and twelve
large
glass
crystals,
playful, hopeful.
Fontana Arte's first artistic director, Gio Ponti, ignited the
firm's agenda with a single-minded devotion to ideals of
artistic excellence, setting out to elevate the company's
creations—and applied art in general—to the status of
architecture and high art.
Decorative art, arguably more than any other art, is
dependent upon, driven by and advanced by the
engine of enlightened manufacture. In Fontana Arte,
author Franco Deboni has given us a panoramic visual
HYLAND
