Ermanno Nason

Ermanno Nason (1928 - 2013) Ermanno Nason was born in Murano to one of the island’s oldest families of glassmakers who trace their roots back to 1300. Following the tradition of Master and Apprentice, little Ermanno was standing at the age of 7 at the door of his father’s glass blowing shop, learning the trade from his father, uncles and brothers. He left school and shared his time between his father’s workshop and the Scuola “Abate Zanetti” per apprendisti vetrai (The Abbott Zanetti School for glass blowing apprentice) night school, where he mastered his trade. The most difficult period for Nason was undoubtedly the War, when he was reduced to making drinking glasses and utilitarian objects that were in demand in order to survive. Nason reconciled himself, like all of Murano, to wait for the end of war to be able “to say something” with his art. Soon after, Nason’s opportunity “to say something” materialized while he was first Maestro at the glass workshop “Mazzega”. An unknown gentleman came in one morning with a folder full of drawings. He showed the drawings and asked whether it would be possible to reproduce them into glass. From that prodigious meeting in 1953 until 1959, Nason created artists’ designs for Egidio Costantini’s Fucina Degli Angeli, including ones by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Jean Cocteau, Max Ernst and many others. Nason went on to create his own designs and collaborate with other artists during his storied career including Aldo Bergamini and Fulvio Bianconi. From 1964 to 1971, Nason was First Master glassblower at Gino Cenedese studio. He made works based on his own designs and in close collaboration with the leading designer Antonio Da Ros. In 1969 he carried out monumental glass sculpture designed by the American painter Harold Stevenson and in 1970 his work, as executor of Da Ros’s designs, was exhibited at the Venice Biennale. From 1972 to 1994 he had his own factory, where he created poly-chrome glass sculptures based on his own designs. This phrase, “to say something” often turned up in meetings with the artist. The Maestro Nason lived in a parallel world made of figures and sculptures that were not mere works of art, for the simple fact that they did not wish to be. They were and are material creations of the spirit of a man who has given form to thoughts, ideas and designs that, even when originating from others, still retain an unmistakable imprint that make them his own.