Barovier & Toso: Taif Mythologie, 21 60

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In 1980, the sovereign of Saudi Arabia
commissioned an important studio of
Parisian interior designers to create his
new palace in the city of Taif. The French
designers contacted Barovier&Toso to
design and supply a series of grand
chandeliers to hang in the royal palace.
This prospect of putting a Venetian chandelier
into a setting governed by French taste
prompted Angelo Barovier&Toso to rethink the
image of the glass tradition in Murano. In order
to fit the design to its setting, Barovier&Toso
had to free up the space to insert original and
different elements. At the same time, he had
to safeguard the essence of the Venetian idiom.
A procedure of subtraction and replacement
took shape, a process of simplification and
enrichment. The design’s identity is entrusted
to the silhouettes of the chandelier’s arms,
whose curves are defined by a load bearing
metallic armature where the glass was inserted.
The traditional decorations of leaves and flowers
were abolished, and the traditional decorative
element is limited just to bishops’ crosiers: large-
scale, twisting shepherds’ crooks made of glass.
This substantial simplification was made even
more evident by forgoing polychrome,
substituted by a sober monochrome
composition. This preventive purification of
the Murano Model made the introduction
of formally different elements possible.
These betrayed the archetype of the Venetian
chandelier and restored definite brilliancy to the
whole. The drops in Bohemian crystal and the
unusual candles that hold the bulbs were made
of shiny chrome plated steel. This decorative
choice was exalted a few years later when
Barovier&Toso proposed a dramatic version
of the chandelier all in black for the Seoul Hyatt
Hotel. Although black was part of the Venetian
tradition, it had never before been used as the
only color.
This gap was precisely where the new Taif
chandelier imposed itself, opening up new
perspectives of the Classic when compared
to the traditional models. While preserving all
the formal quality and value of the glass from
Murano, its capacity to take on new languages
as well, saved Taif from the dusty warehouse
of distant memory. Neither a replica nor an
invention, Taif condensed different materials
and experiences in a completed synthesis; it
went beyond the paradigm of history to alight
on the balanced equilibrium of the Classic.