S.a.i.a.r Murano Biography
The company was founded in 1895 and produced the first objects with a "modern" taste, a series of murrine vases made to a design by the Swedish artist Anna Akerdhal, wife of the graphic designer Guido Balsamo Stella; these objects were exhibited in 1920 at the Italian Industrial and Decorative Art Exhibition in Stockholm (Sweden).
In 1923 the company created a series of thin, lightweight blown glass and continued this line for a long time, although some minor changes were made. The company also ventured into the production of lamps with geometric shapes, made of milky glass, designed by Guido Balsamo Stella, Vittorio Donà, Anita Antoniazzo, to whom the magazine Casabella dedicated a long article in 1929.
In the same year, the Sambuco workshop was opened in Turin, designed by the architect Pagano Pogatschnig and Levi-Montalcini, with furniture by Ercole Morlotti and curtains by the Lenci company. In addition to the SAIAR Ferro-Toso glassworks, artistic ceramics by Lenci and Chini, Primavera and Rouard were offered to the public. But the greatest recognition came in Monza, on the occasion of the 1930 Triennale, where several series of blown vases and statuettes designed by Guido Balsamo Stella were exhibited: the "chemists", "gazelles", "ermines" which received so much consensus that one of these figurines, a cute little animal perhaps a weasel, standing on its hind legs near a blue flower, was selected as the symbol of the same exhibition.
At the 1932 Venice Biennale, together with some more traditional blown objects, some innovative proposals were exhibited, designed by Vittorio Donà, including the mugnoni vases, spherical vases with pale pink applications in a circular shape, whose new interest technical would later lead to further decorative solutions. In 1936 the company merged with Barovier & Co. to create the Ferro-Toso-Barovier company, which two years later ultimately led to the formation of Barovier & Toso.
