Venice, early fifties
FRANCO AND FILIPPO URBANI ESTABLISH OTTICA URBANI
Ottica Urbani was founded in 1953 in Frezzeria, where it still stands close to St. Mark’s Square.
These are the years of the first experiences in design applied to eyewear which are supported by advanced technical research.
Owing to this favorable combination, OTTICA URBANI soon becomes a true crossroads and a meeting point for the greater exponents of the intellectual and cultural life in Venice.
Music, Vedova, Hemingway, and famous architects such as Le Corbusier and Carlo Scarpa offer their suggestions for the making of personalized glasses, true artistic expressions. In the sixties the second Urbani store is born in the main avenue on the Lido in Venice, a favorite destination for the protagonists of the International Film Festival.
Even today the association with different forms of art, originality and craftsmanship are fundamental components of the Urbani philosophy.
This is how unique glasses are born, the fruit of a creative and ironic experimentation, whereby the use of heterogeneous materials, such as textiles or Murano glass murrine, render each model the unique expression of a lively personality tinged with optimism.
It is thanks to this propensity to design research that OTTICA URBANI is able to offer selected and innovative brand proposals with a strong avant-garde orientation, like Mykita and Kuboraum, who work in close connection with artists of the contemporary scene.
EYEWEAR WITH A UNIQUE DESIGN
The focus of Urbani’s production is research together with a natural propensity for experimentation. This attitude has led to the rediscovery of techniques and materials which are typical of small craft companies in the Veneto, a true excellence of our Made in Italy. The designs, always original, are where we start from to create glasses intended as collector's items: milling, incisions of words, symbols and icons create a new way of communicating one's personality simply by wearing a pair of URBANI glasses.
Glasses in cellulose acetate (a polymer traditionally used in eyewear) are now sided by wooden glasses treated with natural waxes and pigments and water buffalo horn glasses: precious materials with a unique design which underline once more the specificity of the Italian product.
