HEAVEN SENT FROM MURANO

While on a month-long vacation in Italy last year, lawyers Jose and Clarisse Evangelista found themselves in Venice shopping for "something different" from the prosaic glass trinkets – purportedly from Murano – commonly found in the shops which fill the winding streets and canals of the famous Italian city.

Perhaps fate brought them to the Campo San Vio, a small square located between the Guggenheim Museum and the Accademia along the Grand Canal, where they chanced upon a small gallery with no name run by the designer team of Marina and Susanna Sent who produce functional art – in this case a range of fashion jewelry and accessories made of hand blown Murano glass.

Typical of the inhabitants of Murano, the Sent family has been in the glassmaking business for generations. About a decade ago, sisters Marina and Susanna decided to create modern incarnations of the traditional art of Murano by creating their own line of jewelry, accessories and other items for the home.

Their unique products include "Soap," a necklace made of clear globes of glass in various sizes strung together and inspired by soap bubbles and the "Corallo" line which features coral-shaped glass in different colors. Marina Sent comments: "We think Corallo will be the next fad, but we want to be ecological and keep the real coral under the sea, where it belongs".

Although they have been bringing in the handblown products for the past year, sales have been limited to friends and acquaintances only. The Evangelistas will publicly showcase the creations of Marina and Susanna Sent for the first time in "Innovations in Murano Glass," a unique show of jewelry and accessories at Gallery Nine, Art Walk, SM Megamall, telephone no. 687-7302, ongoing until Wednesday, October 29.

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