High-end bongs: luxury Venice glassmaker enters the market

A group of young Italian entrepreneurs have refashioned Venice’s centuries-old Murano glass into colourful bongs priced at up to €5,000 (£4,230) a pop.

Marco Lazzari, Sara Diana and Edward Russell are the three behind the Moorano brand, founded in 2021 in Venice’s ancient patchwork of alleys and canals, in a bid to build a bridge between the city’s past and present.

“For us, bongs, or soul vases, as we call them, are a symbol of freedom. Our entire brand is based on the concept of freedom: of the body, of the mind and of the spirit,” says Russell, co-founder and business manager of the Moorano brand.

“We directly work with master glassmakers from Murano who create glass items using techniques that go back to the 13th century,” Russell tells The Independent. “Marco, Moorano’s designer and creator, designs the artworks and then the glassmakers realise them.”

Venice is famed for its glass but this is thought to be the first time it has been used for bongs.

Bongs can be used to smoke cannabis, tobacco, or other herbal substances.

The glass, which is liquefied in extremely high temperatures and moulded into different patterns, rose to fame over the centuries for its unique shapes and colours.

From the first mirrors and bottles in the 13th-century Republic of Venice to today’s valuable bongs – Murano glass has taken on countless forms.

Typically, the glass was made on the Venetian island of Murano. The Moorano brand is a play on words.

Although archaeological research suggests that glass production was practiced in the region prior to the foundation of the Republic of Venice in the seventh century, it wasn’t until 1291 that the product became known as Murano glass.

By the late thirteenth century, the flames used to make the colourful glass had inadvertently started fires inside the city centre, leading local authorities to relocate the glassmakers to the nearby island of Murano.

The glassware thrived, quickly becoming a symbol of wealth for those who could afford it and an important source of revenue for the city.

But the rise of knockoffs over the past decade and the coronavirus pandemic hit the industry hard. The nail in the coffin came in the form of a hike in gas prices, key to the continuous use of fire, causing many of the smaller businesses to shut down.

open image in gallery

But the young Moorano team members are enthusiastic and say their project is a “completely fresh and never seen before use of Murano glass”.

“Moorano is definitely a niche brand, which targets high-end buyers, both from an economic and artistic point of view,” explains Russell. 

Their artwork, they say, is certified through virtual non-fungible token (NFT) counterparts, which are minted on a blockchain and stored as proof of the product’s authenticity.

In addition the NFT can also be used to project the artwork on a screen, thus creating a virtual counterpart to the physical bong.

This, says the Moorano team, is set to make “this ancient culture immortal where once it was at risk of disappearing, granting this hereditary artistic patrimony a new lease of life”.

“The iconic forms of the Moorano soul vase and chiloom, on the other hand, are made to be, yes, observed and touched but also listened to in their bubbling, tasted, smelled, smoked and enjoyed,” the team says in a statement.