Marco Toso Borella | Glass Art
The Artistic Technique
FROM A MILLENARY ART
Gold is the noble metal par excellence.
In human history, it has taken on the most diverse symbolic values, becoming pragmatic when used as a currency of exchange, precious when used for jewelry, noble in heraldry, and ‘celestial’ in Art History.
Gold, in fact, has risen as a symbolic material in the representation of Paradise and in this context assumes the role of protagonist, in Byzantine icons, where its presence remains strong today, and in the sacred pictorial contexts of the Italian and European Middle Ages.
Glass is the first synthetic material in history.
Its discovery dates back to the third millennium BC in the Mesopotamian area, but the revolutionary discovery of glassblowing, which allowed for the creation of drinking glasses, is dated to the 1st century BC on the eastern coasts of the Mediterranean.
UNIQUENESS OF MURANO GLASS
Different types of glass exist in the world, which differ substantially in their chemical composition formula.
All glass is composed of silica sand, a substance defined as “flux” – which lowers its melting temperature – and other materials that influence its stability, color, quality, and transparency.
Among all the different types of glass, Murano glass has always been considered the Glass par excellence, so much so that it has almost become its synonym.
What makes Murano Glass special is the use, in its composition, of an element capable of extending its solidification times and therefore allowing for the creation of more elaborate shapes: the “flux,” soda, once extracted from the ashes of Mediterranean plants (glasswort, saltwort, barilla), and in modern times processed through chemical processes (Solvay, Leblanc).
To these main elements, discoveries, techniques, compositions, formulas, and true “recipe patents” have been added over the centuries, which the Muranese called “partìe” and which have been handed down through the centuries from father to son, through notes and booklets jealously guarded by families and bequeathed to subsequent generations.
Since ancient times, Venice identified the island of Murano as the exclusive site for glass production, but in 1291 the Serenissima Republic officially decreed that glassworks must be located only and exclusively on the island of Murano (effectively creating the first industrial district in history) and, later, that only those born in Murano could work in the sector.
A choice due to the desire to preserve the historic center from the risk of fire but above all for “protectionist” needs regarding the know-how that made Venice number one in the world in this market.
To be able to work with glass, it was therefore necessary to be born in Murano to a Muranese family registered in the Libro d’oro di Murano (Golden Book of Murano).
It was not a noble belonging but a professional category that granted exclusive advantages and privileges. Almost everyone in Murano, therefore, lived off glass.
Each family specialized in a particular artistic technique, in the production of specific products, and in all those services ancillary to the production process, always jealously guarding the recipes generation after generation.
Even the gold leaf on glass tiles used for mosaics are manufactured on the island.
The decoration and engraving of 24k gold leaf on glass transform this art into a protagonist, born almost as an accessory to the large-scale production of mosaic tiles.
MURANO GLASS GOLD GRAFFITO 3D
MURANO GLASS AS A "PHILOSOPHICAL CANVAS"
A NEW CONTEMPORARY HORIZON FOR AN ANCIENT TECHNIQUE
Marco Toso Borella has renewed the ancient family technique of graffito on gold leaf practiced for centuries by his family, saving it from the oblivion to which it would have been destined and reinterpreting it in a contemporary key.
The result is an absolutely innovative development in which the precious raw material “Murano Glass”, embellished by gold leaf, is further ennobled by being used as a “canvas” for the engraving of works of art with strong technical value and an even higher conceptual value.
40 YEARS OF EXPERIENCE
FROM “ARTISTIC CRAFTSMANSHIP” TO “ART”
Murano Glass becomes a “medium,” the vehicle for a message.
It is exactly at this juncture that the centuries-old tradition of high artistic craftsmanship belonging to the “Toso Borella” family definitively rises to Art.
In over 40 years of activity, Marco Toso Borella has invented and developed several innovative techniques that allow him to enhance the transparency and depth of glass, such as the overlapping of different levels of glass plates or the double-sided painting of the raw plate.
Through the layering of glass, he explores depth, transparency, and complex narrative levels.
His works, often metaphysical in nature, integrate symbols drawn from classical mythology reworked into original and contemporary forms, moving away from technical mannerism.
Since 2016, one of his has been installed inside the Basilica of San Donato in Murano. Glass Stations of the Cross
Since 2022, some of his works have been on permanent display on the first floor of the Murano Glass Museum, where they represent a significant example of contemporary Muranese glass art.
CONTEMPORARY
GOLD GRAFFITO
The technique developed over the years by Marco Toso Borella, while being in full continuity with his family’s artistic pedigree, represents in fact an ontological leap from the dimension of excellent artistic craftsmanship to pure art.
He has, in fact, independently developed a variation of the ancient technique of “graffito on gold leaf,” unique in its kind and the expression of a cultured and conscious evolution of the “Toso Borella” family tradition.
In his hands, the engraving on gold leaf is no longer just empty and repetitive decoration for its own sake but becomes “writing,” an artistic message.
Murano glass is no longer the end of artistic creation but a “medium” for the expression of an abstract artistic concept. It is a place where art happens.
The different levels of the work’s composition represent different levels of depth in reading today’s world. “Glass pages” through which the Master tells, through symbolic and allegorical elements, his inner, dreamlike world.
Marco Toso Borella’s artistic intuition is therefore to write his story on glass, the very history of Murano, of Venice, and of contemporary society through an ancient artistic technique renewed by the gaze of a 21st-century man.
The traditional “Graffito on gold leaf applied to Murano glass” becomes “Three-dimensional and multifaceted graffito”: “Murano Glass Gold Graffito 3D”.
HOW THE WORKS ARE CREATED
Marco Toso Borella’s works are divided into two different types of application of the “Murano Glass Gold Graffito 3D” technique he developed, depending on whether they are supported by plates of raw artisanal Murano Glass (rough) or in plates of industrial Murano Glass, used for the manufacture of mirrors (flat).
In both cases, the Master’s contemporary interpretation starts from the ancient steps of the original production process: the creation of the glass glue, the application of the 24k gold leaves; the engraving of the golden skin with a needle; the firing of the work in the kiln.
During the firing process, the glue vitrifies, embedding the gold leaf along with its design.
Once the firing process is complete, the engraving is enriched with colored glass enamels that, in his original artistic elaboration, Marco Toso Borella places on both surfaces of the glass. He thus generates a three-dimensional vision of the drawing that exploits the transparency of the glass as an element of the composition itself and the light that passes through it as the protagonist of the dialogue between materials.
The indissoluble bond between glass and gold during firing makes Marco Toso Borella’s works “eternal” and incorruptible over time.
EXTREME AESTHETICS OF SUBTRACTION
Marco Toso Borella is considered one of the most authoritative masters of the graffito technique for the extreme executive perfection of his strokes that give life to the work of art by subtracting luminous matter (gold). A very delicate scratch that becomes a powerful gesture in a moment where no error is allowed. The engraving on the gold leaf thus assumes the symbolic meaning of the artist’s labor as he digs into the most noble material in search of subterranean meanings enclosed in the depths of the glass and of himself.
It is the sublimation of a primordial matter composed of the four alchemical elements: Earth, the sand from which the matter originates; Fire, which melts the sand to transform it into glass; Air, the vital breath of the Master; Water, the amniotic fluid surrounding the island of Murano.
The Muranese furnace is its essential original creative crucible.
ETERNAL WORKS OF ART
The technique developed over the years by Marco Toso Borella is unique in its kind: it is based on ancient knowledge handed down in the family for more than six generations but has also been enriched with original insights and intuitions, the result of over 40 years of experience.
As an absolute guarantee of the quality of his works, the artist offers a profound knowledge of the raw material “Murano Glass,” its unique physical characteristics, the peculiarities regarding its relationship with pure gold, its decoration with enamels, and its resistance to temperature variations and time.
The indissoluble bond between glass and gold during firing makes Marco Toso Borella’s works “eternal” and incorruptible over time.
All his works are unique pieces, the result of his artistic creativity. The master does not create copies or faithful reproductions of works by other artists.
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The Construction of Adam
In his works, it is as if Marco Toso Borella were talking about computers in Latin.
He uses a millenary art to speak of today, to speak to those who look at his works today in a dialogue between past and present.