When Angelo Mangiarotti (Milan 1921-2012) started the cooperation with Colle Cristalleria in 1985, he knew he could count on a technical wisdom that the Colle Val d’Elsa zone (between Florence, Siena and San Gimignano) boasts over the centuries in the field of glass and crystal production. In the quiet of these hills, grown with the atavistic ritual of the furnaces, between fire, reeds and pincers, Mangiarotti oriented the excellent production quality to the glassware, starting a project of radical redesign of some elements of the tableware: the carafe, the glass, the centerpiece, the vases, the candelabrum etc.

Between this objects family, the “centers”, thanks to their geometric and functional independence from the other elements of the tableware, offer to Mangiarotti unlimited expressive freedoms. The crystal, with its lead percentage more than 24%, has uncommon sonority and shines. This is the main difference compared to the glass: iridescences and transparencies arise also from a different inclination or from simple slips of the structural planes, without however compromising the visual continuity of the contained object.

Like in the Monos collection, designed in 2003 and manufactured in few models, where the conventional isolation of the round is declined in a more modern triangular form, a sort of shield concentrically expands, from the center to the edges, rising a few centimeters, just enough to accommodate spring flowers, branches, small signs of everyday life.

Sizes: diameter 40xh.3,5 cm

Also the fruit bowl, real declination of the more common centerpiece, is from the same collection, like Mangiarotti imagined it: overflowing with sagging and vibrant in colors fruits, as a Caravaggio basket.

The less rigid geometry allows unexpected roundnesses, in an almost naturalistic key, at the same time flaunting a greater height, guaranteed by a solid and eccentric inclined "stem".

Sizes: diameter 28xh.10 cm

Angelo Mangiarotti was one of the most famous architects of XXth century. He was an italian ambassador in the world and a lot has been written about him, above all in relation to the architectural work.
His constant presence in the manifactural districts, like Cantù for the furniture, Vicenza and Milan for the ceramic, Carrara for the marble, Volterra for the alabaster, Colle Val D’Elsa for the crystal, is also known, but poorly documented.
The exception is represented by Colle Val d’Elsa; in fact, in the volume “Angelo Mangiarotti. Disegnare il cristallo”, a lot of his many realised projects are collected, together with the technical drawings and the preliminary sketches in mixed charcoal in color, with the unmistakable energy that only the stretch of Angelo Mangiarotti knew how to release.

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