The award recognizes exceptional design and the ability to combine innovation with tradition: these two values have defined the vision and language of Barovier&Toso, the world’s oldest still-operating glassworks, for more than seven centuries.
In the silent language of nature, the agave embodies an ancient grace, a strength capable of resisting time and heat. Its slender and harmonious leaves unfold like living sculptures, reflecting a light that is both vital and rarefied. It is from this powerful image that Agave, the collection designed by García Cumini for Barovier&Toso, takes shape. It has now been awarded the prestigious Archiproducts Design Award 2025 in the Lighting category.
This recognition celebrates design excellence and the ability to blend innovation and tradition: two values that, for over seven centuries, have defined the vision and language of Barovier&Toso, the oldest glassworks in the world still in operation.
Nature as a matrix of light
In the Agave suspension lamp, the creative gesture stems from the observation of nature and translates into a dialogue between matter, form, and light. The eponymous plant, with its elegant geometry and innate resilience, becomes the symbol of a dynamic balance between strength and lightness, between the organic and the sculptural.
García Cumini reinterprets this vegetal symbol through the lens of Venetian crystal, entrusting the skill of Murano's master glassmakers with the task of translating the plant's vitality into a luminous symbol. Each element is hand-shaped in the heat of the furnace.
The agave leaf, transformed into a luminous module, takes on an iconic, elongated, and sinuous profile. Its surfaces are covered with an infinite number of irregular micro-reliefs that capture and refract light: this is the “rugiada” technique, an exclusive Barovier&Toso process that gives the material a vibrant brilliance and an extraordinarily refined three-dimensional texture.
The Magic of Agave
What makes Agave unique is its innovative shaded effect, created using the "rugiada” technique. This complex process involves spreading glass granules over the still-incandescent surface, creating an effect reminiscent of the enchantment of sunlight filtering through the leaves of a Mediterranean plant. Each element of the suspension thus becomes a small luminous landscape, in which the material seems to breathe, animated by iridescent reflections and a visual depth that varies as the gaze changes.
The interplay between transparency, color, and light transforms Agave into a poetic presence, perfect for domestic or contract environments where a balance between modernity and artisanal memory is desired.
The award-winning suspension: a symbol of rebirth
Among the collection's various configurations, the Agave suspension lamp won over the international jury of the Archiproducts Design Awards 2025 for its concept and formal originality. The award, given annually to projects that define contemporary design trends, recognizes Barovier&Toso and García Cumini's ability to transform Murano tradition into a contemporary language, without ever distorting its essence.
The suspension lamp is composed of leaves that fan out around a luminous core, creating an effect of ascending motion and a diffused, dynamic illumination. The design, both essential and sculptural, highlights the purity of Venetian crystal and the complexity of its handcrafted workmanship.
The jury recognized Agave for its material poetry, its symbolic value, and its ability to harmoniously combine aesthetics and function. A work that speaks of rebirth and light, of the balance between nature and artifice, of art that becomes a sensorial experience.
The strength of Venetian Crystal
Making Agave means undertaking an extraordinarily complex technical and creative process. Each leaf is blown and shaped by hand, then subjected to dew processing and finally finished with colored grit, a process that requires absolute precision and carefully calibrated cooling times. It's a trilogy of time: preparation, melting, and finishing. Three days of ancient gestures that have been repeated for centuries inside the Murano furnaces, where glass is born from sand and fire and transformed into light.
García Cumini, an Italian-Spanish duo founded by Cinzia Cumini and Vicente García Jiménez, shares with Barovier&Toso an approach that favors the harmony between emotion and rationality, between function and poetry. Their research, always oriented towards the dialogue between culture and nature, finds a perfect synthesis in this collection: light becomes a living material, capable of telling a story that arises from the earth and is fulfilled in the air.
Venetian crystal, a hallmark of Barovier&Toso, reveals all its expressive power here: pure, luminous, vibrant. A living material, reflecting the mastery of glassmakers and the magic of an island that for over seven hundred years has been the beating heart of global glass art.
Agave is a luminous experience that narrates the encounter between art and life, between human gesture and natural form. Barovier&Toso invites you to discover it in its showroom at Via Durini 5, Milan, and on the official website, where the collection is presented along with other new products dedicated to contemporary interiors.
