La Madonna - An EDAG Crystal Creation

lunasabrina
Dec 21, 2025
4 min read

La Madonna, An EDAG Crystal Creation

In the spirit of the season: buon natale, joyeux fêtes, happy holidays and merry Christmas to those participating in this year's festivities.

There are some things which some of us believe to be true, and that is EDAG is the GOAT (Greatest of all time) within Canadian vintage art glass. Due to this, the sheer variety and one-offs of EDAG glass continues to expand as I document it. Maestro Danilo Pavanello (EDAG owner) spent every day in the hotshop and therefore was able to create one-of-a-kind pieces, unleashing his creativity and culture. This most recent find is no exception to this, and with that I am beyond pleased to present La Madonna, an EDAG crystal creation.

Special thanks to the Maestro and his granddaughter Tamara Boutros, who continue to provide unconditional support with identification, design intentions, and in this case, confirmation of the religious character.

A bit of backstory on this piece: when you feel it has been lost, one last attempt can sometimes yield an outcome like this. This piece came up online for $20. By the time I wrote the seller, it was sold. I had that deflated feeling of loss that happens when you see a piece so rare slip out of your grasp. I was devastated and the seller felt my disappointment. At that point it was time to move on.

Two weeks later, I noticed a red exclamation point within my unread messages. Upon reading it, I was flooded with excitement. The message read: "I was given your name by the person who sold me the figurine. I foster dogs so I am open to selling it to you to help cover costs of my fostering project." It was the new owner ready to part with it! I was so grateful to the original seller for letting them know I really wanted it. Sometimes in this glass collecting journey you find the kindest of people with hearts of gold. Within the week we arranged a meeting location and the excitement of soon being the owner of this piece came back.

As we went to pick it up, we didn't know what to expect. How big would it be? Are there any details the photo didn't portray? The moment of slowly removing it from a rolled-up towel was filled with such excitement, like a child on Christmas day. Once I saw it, it immediately triggered connections in design to other EDAG pieces I have seen or owned.

The design consists of amazingly clear cristallo with hand-tooled vertical lines and the classic EDAG colors of amber and blue. This piece has all the hallmark features of other cristallo figurine designs, for example, this equally rare EDAG snow man, found here within this article.

I then began pondering exactly what it could be. I figured it wasn't an angel because there are no wings. When I shared this with Tamara, I asked if this piece was a nun. Tamara was conveniently with Maestro Danilo Pavanello, and within minutes I got my answer: it's La Madonna. I should have known! La Madonna is often depicted with a halo or, in Italian, aureola; however, she is also represented with a glowing disc behind her head. Besides these important religious representations, I felt that she was staring at something important, which I thought was a Bible. It turns out it would be baby Jesus, which is a traditional pose of the Virgin Mary.

The tooling and broadness of the body provide flow and movement, depicting the mantle La Madonna has historically been shown to wear. The vertical striations throughout the clear glass create a sense of movement and the appearance of fabric draping in natural, uneven folds, as cloth would fall across the body. Above, the blue veil cascades over her head in the traditional manner of Marian iconography, where the head covering symbolizes both modesty and her sacred role as the Mother of God. The masterful application of blue glass captures the celestial quality traditionally associated with the Madonna's veil, as blue has long represented heavenly grace in religious art. This integration of veil and mantle demonstrates Maestro Danilo Pavanello's ability to honor centuries of religious artistic tradition while working within the unique possibilities of molten glass.

The amber disk applied to the head has been smoothed to shape and applied hot. This means La Madonna was placed back inside the furnace, heated to the appropriate temperature, removed, and then the disk was applied. Alternatively, some artists will take the piece out and use a blowtorch to heat the area before applying the disk, a technique sometimes colloquially referred to as "gluing." Maestro Danilo Pavanello does not use this shortcut method. Instead, he takes pride in returning his pieces to the furnace for proper reheating, which creates superior adhesion by truly fusing the glass together into a single unified piece. This same process was applied to the veil and eyes, with the piece returned to the furnace after each application and then placed in a kiln for annealing.

All together, this artistry has produced a very fluid piece of art glass that was not in common production and, to date, is the only one found. Whether or not others exist isn't known. The Maestro has commented that he made a few religious figures in the EDAG hotshop, but the exact number or design of each is a distant memory, hopefully to be reinvigorated as collectors continue to unearth pieces.