Mario Gambaro - Bio

 

Mario Gambaro was born in Murano in 1941. Our family have always been linked with artistic glass production and hand glass making. Eduino Ferro, my great-grandfather, had been for many years glass maker Master of Pauly Glass factory and he took part to the Universal Exposition of Chicago in 1934. One year after he created the Vetreria Ferro Eduino & Co., which unfortunately closed because of his premature death. In the 50s my grandmother, Elia Ferro, had been one of the first women to work “a lume” (a particular hand glass making technique) and she traveled all around the world in order to exhibit this technique. She passed over some years ago but I still remember all her amazing stories about her travels, such as her meeting with the Kennedy family and with other American Movie Stars. Since he was a child my father has always been fascinated by glass hand and most of all by all the creative possibilities involved. At the age of 13 he started working as a simple busboy in a glass factory but shortly he became the assistant of Alfredo Barbini, a great innovator; he was the most talented Master in Murano. When he was around 20 my father became Master himself in the Seguso Vetri d’Arte Glass factory. In this period he realized primarily a production of blown glasses, called “Vecchia Murano”; goblets with dragons, watermarked glasses, marvelous cups and vases. His abilities and skills and his great flexibility in terms of production, led him to commit himself with other techniques such as “sommerso”, “incalmo” and “ a crème”. Within few years he became the main and most skilled Master.

 

During the early 70s the Seguso Vetri D’arte unfortunately closed, but my father started a short but intense and important collaboration with Vincenzo Nason. But he was feeling the urgent of doing something on his own; in 1974 he established the Vetreria Artistica Gambaro & Poggi, with his brother-in-law Bruno Poggi (he was a master in the Archimede Seguso factory) After almost 40 years from its establishing, my father is still the most important person and creative power of the Glass factory thanks to all his intuitions, great and fine taste, his willingness to engage in new experiments and challenges. Almost every single range of products have been created by him or through his collaboration with artists and designers from all around the world, who evaluated his capabilities, ideas and artistic skills as fundamental to realize their own projects and products.