Alchemy

The “Forge of the Angels” glass work­shop owes its exist­ence to one man, Egidio Cost­antini, whose atyp­ical back­ground did not predes­tine him to revolu­tion­ise the world of glass. Indeed, Cost­antini became famil­iar with the work of the Murano craftspeople late in life, after having worked in a number of differ­ent trades. Saddened by the mass produc­tion of glass objects for tour­ists visit­ing Venice, he sought to restore the mater­ial to its former glory by using it as an artistic medium.

From 1950 onwards, he produced over a hundred works in collab­or­a­tion with artists from a wide range of back­grounds. Based on sketches imagined by these artists, the glass­maker gave life to sculp­tural creations which he infused with his own sens­ib­il­ity. Cost­antini went so far as to say: “[…] the draw­ing gradu­ally disap­pears, and the new work brings out the soul of the artist and that of the glass­maker”.

His many collab­or­a­tions were hailed by the crit­ics and, through Amer­ican collector Peggy Guggen­heim, aroused the interest of private art lovers around the world. The master of the Forge of the Angels is unique in that, over and above his creat­ive work, he nurtured a genu­ine compli­city with the greatest artists of his time.

Peter and Traudl Engel­horn were an art-loving couple living in the canton of Vaud who were fascin­ated by the artistic and tech­nical poten­tial of glass. They were both aware of a collec­tion of glass sculp­tures, the result of an inter­est­ing collab­or­a­tion between contem­por­ary artists and the master crafts­man Egidio Cost­antini. They acquired 36 of these pieces, created between 1959 and 1970, to which two were added in 1991.

In 1970 the Engel­horns decided to donate their contem­por­ary glass art collec­tion to the Musée des Arts Décor­at­ifs de la Ville de Lausan­ne—now known as mudac, museum of Contem­por­ary Design and Applied Arts. The dona­tion agree­ment between Peter Engel­horn and the City of Lausanne was signed on 29 March 1971, with the pieces created at the Forge of the Angels join­ing the mudac collec­tion. All were accom­pan­ied by certi­fic­ates, signed and dated by Egidio Cost­antini and engraved with the artist’s name and that of the Fucina degli Angeli.

The Alchemy exhib­i­tion also features a group of contem­por­ary glass works from the mudac collec­tion, some of which are being displayed for the first time. These pieces bear witness among today’s artists in vari­ous ways, to the legacy of this century-old move­ment. They serve as a reminder that Surreal­ism has always celeb­rated total free­dom, and that it contin­ues to offer a form of escape from the real world.