The ex-financier and his father blowing fresh life into Murano glass

The company’s launch, the year before, was made possible by very different professional paths rooted in a deep family connection.

Mussati senior had been a design-world figure for decades: at luxury Italian tiling company Bisazza, at bad-boy British design brand Established & Sons and at Dutch company Moooi under the direction of Marcel Wanders.

Mussati junior worked in finance at Morgan Stanley for a decade before the design bug bit. But whereas his father’s vision for WonderGlass was firmly rooted in Venetian tradition, Christian thought it could be something more.

“All the credit for the conception of WonderGlass goes to Maurizio,” insists Christian. “I was receptive to his vision, then applied the dynamics of an international environment to an artisanal company. The result is a series of ongoing collaborations and interactions with artists and glassmakers, rather than bytes of data running across the net from one screen to another.”

At last month’s Milan Furniture Fair, WonderGlass unveiled new commissioned pieces by Japanese designer Oki Sato (founder of Nendo) and Italian duo Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin under their studio name, Formafantasma.

Formafantasma, a research-based practice that tends to test the limits of a particular industry or aesthetic, created a rudimentary glass chassis suspended from slim metal poles, around which climb delicate mouth-blown glass flowers – thus honouring the decorative Venetian tradition while simultaneously subverting it.

“Working alongside Formafantasma for the first time has allowed us to breathe new life into the traditional art of glass sculpting, merging ancient craftsmanship with modern innovation,” says Christian.

Dusk by Nendo is a series of opaque glass spheres set within frosted glass sheets, each set at a different height to evoke the sun’s path from dawn to dusk. The discs emanate a gentle but compelling glow, which the bronze-tinted sheets further diffuse while also suggesting (to these eyes, anyway) the movement of light particles through outer space.

This is WonderGlass’s third collaboration with Nendo. In 2013, the glassmaker and Japanese studio presented a hand-blown chandelier system called Komori. In 2019 they presented the Melt Edition, a collection of free-form slubbed-glass furniture.

“From the evocative reinterpretation of blown glassmaking in Nendo’s 2013 Komori collection to his exploration of casting techniques with the Melt series, the new lighting collection, called Dusk, now directs the studio’s focus towards the rich tradition of fused glassmaking,” says Maurizio.

“Our aim is to constantly uncover fresh pathways within this timeless craft.”

As well as limited-edition and small-batch production (since every piece is handmade, the company does not have ambitions to mass-produce), WonderGlass offers bespoke surfaces for residential, retail and hospitality clients. The green-hued glass-brick facade of the Hermès store in Amsterdam (designed by MVRDV) is by WonderGlass; as are the pop-floral lights at the new Makoto restaurant in Miami, designed by India Mahdavi.

The robust tubular ‘chandelier’ that illuminates the marble staircase at Francois Pinault’s Bourse de Commerce museum in Paris was designed by Ronan Bouroullec and manufactured by WonderGlass; the conceptual glass cabinetry created by Formafantasma for the inaugural NGV Triennial was also a bespoke production from the Veneto.

“As the conversation around design, fashion and lifestyle broadens out to a wider audience, we see each project as a means to expand the conversation,” says Christian.

“Some aspects might be understood mainly by a limited number of insiders, but we see this community expanding all the time. It is a way to expose people to the aesthetic values that design can evoke. The consequence is far more opportunities to give wider access to the public to have a greater understanding about design.”