It’s hard not to envy the 200-or-so high-wattage guests arriving in Venice, Italy this week for the wedding of Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez. Flotillas of gondolas are at the ready, a local baker is preparing platters of cream puffs and Venetian butter cookies, and a 16th-century Byzantine church is being stuffed with flowers for the ceremony. But for design fans, the most enviable detail of the nuptials leaked so far involves one of the reported wedding favors: the couple has ordered handmade, hand-blown glassware for every guest from the Venetian company Laguna~B.
A Goto glass by Venetian glassmaker Laguna~B.
A set of glasses as opposed to, say, a free ticket on the next Blue Origin space launch? Look, we’re not ruling that out. But Laguna~B is definitely not just any glassware company. It was founded in 1994 by Marie Brandolini, a Parisian descendant of the Rothschild family, born Marie Angliviel de la Beaumelle, who lived in New York City before marrying into Venetian nobility. In the late 1980s, she moved into a 15th-century palazzo on Venice’s Grand Canal with her husband, Count Brandino Brandolini d’Adda.
She began to explore the local glass tradition of Murano and noticed «goto de fornasa”—the glasses that artisans create for themselves for everyday use from leftover glass scraps. Her inspiration was to create her own version with colors and patterns evoking the modern art she had grown up with, including works by Miró and Calder. Brandolini’s first collection, Goto, was launched in 1994, the same year that she set up her Laguna~B studio from her penthouse in the palazzo.
Laguna~B’s founder Marie Brandolini in her Venetian palazzo studio in 1996.
Brandolini documented every glass she made with a Polaroid, exhibited the pieces at the Venice Biennale, and soon had a chic global clientele. Every morning, she would travel to her workshop on the island of Murano by boat and work alongside a cadre of traditional glassblowers as she meticulously designed her creations and signed each piece herself.
Tragically, she died of cancer in 2013 when she was just 50. Three years later, her son Marcantonio Brandolini—who recalls skateboarding as a teenager in Palazzo Brandolini’s Russell Page-designed garden—took over. Since then, Marcantonio, who is also a fine artist, has invigorated Laguna~B with fresh colorways and collaborations with companies like Yves Saint Laurent, perfumer Fréderic Malle, and ELLE Decor A-List designer Alyssa Kapito. The company’s colorful glasses even had a cameo in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie.
The courtyard and garden of Venice’s Palazzo Brandolini, where Laguna~B is based.
Today, Palazzo Brandolini’s ground floor houses Laguna~B’s design studio and archive, while its glassware—from individual glasses (from $160 each) to pitchers, flutes and goblets—is for sale in a shop across the courtyard. Stop by at any time of year and you might catch a glimpse of the palazzo’s famous tenant—clothing designer Diane von Furstenberg currently stays in the lavish «piano nobile» upstairs. This week, however, there may be more than one celebrity sighting. Once the Bezos/Sanchez wedding guests (a group rumored to include Mick Jagger, Jay-Z and Beyonce, and Oprah Winfrey) get their first taste of Laguna~B, they will no doubt be floating up to the palazzo for more.
Ingrid Abramovitch, the Executive Editor at ELLE Decor, writes about design, architecture, renovation, and lifestyle, and is the author of several books on design including Restoring a House in the City.
