Venice Objects, merchants of forgotten objects

The philosophy behind the Venice Objects project lies in the desire to awaken and give new life to all those forms that, forgotten in the dust of memories and dormant hopes, have inhabited the most beautiful houses of the city for decades, as well as the extravagant warehouses hidden in its foundations. From the labyrinthine attics of the palaces on the Grand Canal, through the gleaming amber halls and the imposing entrance halls, the imagination meets the reality of a world that still survives, with its unchanged atmospheres, to the insistence of time that flows between calli, campi and campielli.

Riccardo Benedini, passionate collector of objects, together with the two architects Jacopo Tiso and Chiara Paone, gave life to Venice Objects in the spring of 2016: the three friends fell in love with the old abandoned glass factory of Palazzo Trevisan, on the island of Murano and decided “sight unseen”, to make a proposal to vacate the entire property. An infinity of unnamed, dusty objects often crammed into old wooden crates and buried by more than a century of activity, stories and memories that someone, one day, suddenly stopped counting.

It started as a game; the eviction on the island of Murano represented an opportunity for the three friends to develop a much more complex storytelling project on the city of Venice and its objects. Animated by the desire to offer anyone looking for a particular object the opportunity to experience it directly, Venice Objects organizes, on request, private visits and small auctions of goods and furnishings directly in the most evocative places of the city in agreement with private owners, artists or craftsmen. The team, six years after its first venture, now has several collaborations with architectural firms, interior designers, antique dealers, collectors and creative entrepreneurs in search of original stories that they can document.

Like “living wonders” in a seabed, the stories of Venice Objects resemble colorful shells in different eras, resistant to the current of life but able to mold themselves from hand to hand, waiting eternally for their secret to be renewed. Certain items belong only to those who seek desperately.