Story

Orsoni’s fame begins in Venice. Born into a Murano family in the mid-19th century, Angelo Orsoni spent his early years working in glass factories. What some of his colleagues considered to be humble work quickly fascinated Orsoni and he became particularly skilled in the manufacture of crystal, glass and multi-colored aventurine. Discovered by the famous mosaicist Giandomenico Facchina, Angelo Orsoni presented his own work at the Paris Universal Exhibition in 1889. The success was enormous: his multi-colored painting, created as a collection of samples of smalti and gold mosaic, displayed alongside the most avant-garde techniques, immediately acquired artistic status and was considered a sign of genius of its creator, while representing Orsoni’s first success in a lifetime dedicated to mosaics. He is thus responsible for the marvelous mosaic adornments on the spiers of Gaudi’s masterpiece, the Sagrada Familia, for those inside the Altare della Patria in Rome, and the astonishing Golden Room at Stockholm City Hall, where the Nobel Prizes are awarded. Today the mosaics of Orsoni can be admired in many places; the Sacré-Coeur basilica in Paris, the Paris Opera, the Sanctuary of Lourdes, Westminster Abbey in London for the golden domes and the Buddhas in Bangkok, the king’s palace in Saudi Arabia for the artistic works and Budapest for religious works, and the pagoda of the grand palace of the royal family in Thailand. Orsoni smalti are still made by hand in the Orsoni family villa in Venice, Italy, using the same ancient techniques and traditions passed down from generation to generation. Each tesserae is unique and cannot be reproduced. The luminosity, the cut, the dimension and the homogeneity of the paste of each sherd differ from one to another.