Poems about Color
In 2018, in collaboration with D20 Art Lab of the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, the interactive experience “Sounds from the Color Library” was created. In this experience, imperial reds, flesh tones, and blues are narrated through poetry to immerse the visitor in the world of color and its history.
The three poems, translated over the years into different languages, are the result of study and interviews to uncover the meanings behind the production, the names inherited over the years, and the contexts in which the three main color families of the furnace come to life, a bit like magic, and since 1888, from a heritage that is also passed down through words.
Thanks to the use of HyperSonic Sound® technology, listening is made possible only by entering the range of action of the speaker, creating the impression that the place itself is speaking and telling its extraordinary secrets.
Blue
They said they wanted to catalog all the colors of the world
to store them in a wooden library with wide shelves
like precious books
so that none would be lost
so that people would know where to find them if they had forgotten
They decided to build it on the water so it would float if the flood returned
So they sent expeditions to the ends of the earth
For blue, they cut the sky and the sea into many squares of every shade
taking great care to have a piece of every hour and season
and they cast the nights with the stars
and all the notes of the blues
in irregular shapes so that they
became glass plates a few centimeters thick
If you brought them close to your ear, you could hear the distant sound of the sea’s surf
and the voice of a dark man singing of his lost love
To make each plate they used transparent glass
and added a body, to embody it
a body of white paste
Only one square of sky
remained pure, like a blue soul
so dense, so intense
that it could be real even without the body
They called it Cobalt
and gave it a number: 201
And since “vero” is the Venetian word we give to glass
then perhaps the truth we all seek
to finally find peace
is only a transparency that lets us see beyond
what is after and then again and after again to infinity
and if you encounter it here on earth it has a body of sky in the high seas
and its color is blue
like certain nights
blue like certain notes
cobalt blue
Skin tone
There is an ancient Venetian secret
hidden within these walls
well concealed from your eyes
We do not know how it happened, whether it was an artist or an alchemist
a great master or a craftsman
but everyone says it happened in Murano
In every human face, creation shines
in the complexion of black and white
in the skin of the Arab and the Indian
for centuries the splendor of gold has been revealed
It is the secret of ruby red glass
To color the flesh in all its shades
pure gold is used, melted at high temperatures
To obtain the mother of every creature
ruby-tinted mother
pure gold is melted, which then becomes a rose
It is beautiful to know and beautiful to think
that even among glass, as in nature
the rose of flesh is precious to create
After all, we are gold
We should remember that
Imperial
“The master of reds has not yet been born,”
that’s what they told me
because while cadmium and selenium
no longer hold any secrets,
it is difficult to reproduce them in every shade
They call them imperial,
the reds and yellows of Orsoni,
imperial,
and they have been shining brightly since 1928 on the spires of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.
And I thought it was
because blood is red and the sun is yellow,
the empire of life, I thought, infused, distilled into squares
every light of dawn and sunset
enclosed in a plate that warms to the touch.
Every blood and every soul,
because mosaics are also made with souls.
Souls are semi-finished products,
a master of color told me in front of the furnace.
I liked that phrase so much,
it lingered, floating around my eyes for a day.
I thought of mine, semi-finished and always indecisive,
shuttling between heaven and earth.
And there are three souls, he added, showing them to me:
the lemon soul, the orange soul,
and the flesh-colored soul.
But the reds and yellows are imperial because the recipe for cadmium and selenium came from Germany and was dedicated to its emperor,
yet I will continue to think and tell that they are so called because they hold the sun.
