Designer Guides
Designer Profiles
Fiam Italia
Italian Innovation
Fiam Italia was started in 1973 by designer Vittorio Livi to create furniture that celebrated his love of glass as a material. Growing up in Italy he was aware of the traditions of glass blowing and using innovative design to create beautiful pieces of artwork and sculpture. What he hoped to achieve however was to use this complex material as the central substance in his designs.
His interest in glass is that it can be many things all at the same time, as well as being fragile it can be incredibly strong. The strength of glass means that it can be used as the main component of a chair or table or in fact as the whole component because it is malleable it can be made into a whole number of designs. Vittorio was not just interested in simply using proven techniques to create his furniture but to create new machines to enable glass to be used in a way that it had not been previously used.
Glass centre Stage
Glass is a brittle but hard substance that can be moulded into any shape with the right technology and craftsmanship. The composition of glass can vary depending on what you would like the final product to be like. If the glass is intended to be more brilliant then glass with lead crystal would be the glass of choice, glass with Boron means that the glass can withstand a higher heat and this is what creates Pyrex.
Vittorio Livi liked the fact that glass is hygienic and environmentally friendly which has become even more poignant in the currant climate.
Curved glass for the home
Fiam Italia creates hand crafted and machine moulded pieces of glass furniture, many of the designs feature single pieces of glass that have been moulded into a curved shape with the use of a glass furnace and a master craftsman who bends the glass into the correct shape with great care and attention.
The glass used in the designs is in sheets that are cut and ground into the correct shapes and then bent by the craftsmen after being heated to temperatures of around 623 degrees. Any faults in the glass would cause it to break and the whole process would have to start all over again.
Fiam Italia in their quest to push the boundaries of glass making and create incredible designs have created new machinery capable of making the exact shapes and finishes they require for their designs.
Many sculptors and designers that specialise in glass have contributed to the designs available from Fiam Italia including Philippe Starck and Paolo Rizzatto so you are sure to find a style that would suit your home.
