Filippini & Paoletti Florence
Custom Jewelry and Religious Items
Made with Venetian Glass from Murano Island
Italiano 
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The History of Byzantine Mosaic in Florence:
To find the origins
of Byzantine mosaics, we must go back to the times of Byzantium and the Roman
Empire of the East. The first testimonies etist thanks to the Vatican
State which, in founding the Veneranda Fabbrica di San Pietro, enabled
mosaic art to take its own identity indipendently of painting. At the
same time, a close link was mantained with the art of painting which
had enabled mosaics, first in tessaera and later using more minute fragments,
to develop.
Towards the end of the 18th century, artisans left the Vatican's Reverenda
Fabbrica and brought the art of mosaics in Florence, where it found a fertile
terrain for rapid growth. The existence of small workshops operated by mosaic
artisans enabled this art to be passed on from generation to generation. Indeed,
information testifying to the activities of an artisan's laboratory which would
later become Filippini & Paoletti first appeared in the second half
of the 19th century.
Filippini & Paoletti is now in its fourth
generation.
Alfonso Filippini, master goldsmith, and Vittorio Paoletti, who studied
under a mosaic scholar of the period, decided to open up a laboratory
in an old cellar in the historic centre to produce mosaic objects
for the Florentine nobility and prosperous tourist of that era.
Some of the works dating back to this period, among which a Catholic cross
of considerable value, are today on exhibition in the Vatican Museums.
Their sons, Ilario FIlippini and Giovanni Paoletti, followed in their footsteps.
After thema came the grandchildren Paris Filippini and Ruggero Paoletti, who
shifted the workshop to its current setting in Piazza Santo Spirito in 1947.
The first exports took place in the immediate post-war period, and since 1970
Ascanio Fei, Filippini's nephew, and Paolo Paoletti, flanked by their sons,
are owners of the company, the most important manufacture of Byzantine mosaics.
Our Production
The mosaic articles are manufactured
today exactely as they always have been. The glass sheets come from Murano where the highest qualities are producted. The sand
still employed today to make the glass is rich in silicon and pure crystals
to ensure uniquely vivid colours. In our Florentine workshop, a special
oven is used to melt these sheets down. And it is at this stage that
the artist's inspiration and experience enables him to match colours
and mould the glass in different forms to design petals of roses, daisies,
dablias, leaves, and so on. When the compound is all ready, it is "pulled" with
special instruments to make several rods about 30 cm. in length. At this
point, the true Byzantine mosaic workmanship begins. A layer of special
fast-drying stucco capable of holding together the tiny pieces of glass
is spread over the base of the object.
Once the rods that
will be used for the piece have been chosen, the artisan needs
two instruments: a pair of pincers and a small saw. And so his
work begins - cutting the rod with a clean strike, he removes the
tiny pieces with the pincers and places them on the stucco. This
continues until the entire surface is covered with ever tinier
pieces from the glass rods, thus obtaining completely original
designs.
This procedure and
these working methods have not changed in all this time and has passed
on through the centuries from artisan to artisan, from father to son,
thus achieving an art whose outstanding value is, as was recorded in
letters of the 18th century,
"...that of preserving its colours in all
its vividness without the fear that time's destructing touch on painting
works can alter it in the slightest way."
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