Luigi Bormioli Catalog de prezentare 2018 | Page 2

“ART IS LONG AND TIME
IS FLEETING”:
THUS SPOKE THE GREAT
LONGFELLOW.
It is not easy to be content with only one
life, even if lived in an artistic way. How
many fathers hoped that their children,
generation after generation, could follow
in their footsteps and continue their
job. This hope was not always based
on mere patrimonial reasons or on
subjective existential reasons. Many of
these fathers, sharing Hegel’s school of
thought, felt that their work, being in Art’s
service, is never accomplished for good.
In accordance with Life, Life with capital
L, which carries on never-ending beyond
individual lives. If we truly believe in the Spirit that becomes History: then which more
convincing testimony of evolution than the one of glass craftsmanship which, continually
confirmed itself and at the same time totally transformed throughout the centuries?
Around the year one thousand, in the area of Altare, near Genova, a district of “magistri
vitriorum” (glass masters) was found, in addition to the renowned Venetians one. Two
maritime republics: the glass was blown where the sea is with the sand.
These intrepid masters encouraged their boldness for adventure relying in what today
we would call know-how. Amongst these masters the Bormioli soon became prominent.
Every now and then, they would change their name in Bormiol, they would pack their
belongings and, as ancient commuters, they would go to France, experiencing a different
type of Europe, marked by opportunities for artists and craftsmen.
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At the beginning of the nineteenth century, during a family diaspora, the father of my
grandfather’s grandfather (whose name was obviously Luigi Bormioli) left Liguria where he
was born to seek fortune in the Parma area. A lot of efforts, dreams, disenchantment! And
yet as always, alive and tenacious, was their passion for their craft.
Even when, around 1950, industrial machinery and technological innovations started to be
widely used changing radically the environment, the structures and the processes. The secret
of this indestructible love of “white heat” has always consisted of the virile, exciting and
even mimetically burning capacity to win the challenge against the apparently indomitable
fire. So when my father Luigi invented a new market segment for blown tableware products
forty years ago, by industrialising the manufacturing of elegant products at industrial prices,
in that occasion too, the natural focus was on the technical productive aspect rather than
on marketing logics.
Nowadays, the undersigned is the only one from the Bormioli families who still manufactures
glass. At the service of what is right and beautiful, taking pride of a thousand-year privilege,
those who work for Bormioli Luigi company, inspired by the magic of the glass, define every
day the true meaning of their work and try to innovate keeping faithful to the culture of
their true origins. These men intend to promote a fascinating aesthetic.
An aesthetic, just like few others, able to interpret in an ingenious way the sacredness of
all the things existing in this world and their interrelationships: Glass as a metaphor of Life.
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