These Artistic Venetian Masks Actually Come From Albania

They’re beguiling, charming, sometimes unnerving. Others grin or stare you down.

These are traditional Venetian masks, and a profusion of them are on display in the expansive showroom of the Venice Art studio/mask factory. It’s an enthralling and unexpected attraction, not in Italy, but in Shkodër, Albania, a city known for art and craftsmanship.

These colorful, ornate, often over-the-top curiosities are shipped from the factory to cities around the world, and are inherent elements of the Venice Carnival, the Shkodër Carnivale, Mardi Gras, and masquerade balls and parades globally. Masks were a focal point of life in Venice centuries ago, enabling people of different classes to mix without being recognized or ridiculed and engage in gambling or other uninhibited behaviors that were frowned upon or illegal at the time.

Masks originating from the Venice Art factory have also been seen in stage productions and movies, and were most famously worn by Tom Cruise and other cast members in the Stanley Kubrick classic film “Eyes Wide Shut.” Aside from their theatrical merits, the masks are frequently purchased as decorative pieces for the home.

“Everything you see here — all the masks — we treat as works of art,” Edmond Angoni, the founder and owner of Venice Art, tells a visitor at the Venice Art facility.

“These are beautiful, traditional Venetian masks, unlike the 85 percent of the Venetian-style masks you see that are not true Venetian masks because they’re from China or elsewhere in Asia, and made in cheap material like plastic,” Angoni says, speaking through a translator. “It’s easy to make a million of these masks in plastic. My philosophy is [to] create masks as art.

“Every mask made here is unique,” Angoni adds. “We create 1,700 distinct models during the year. No two are the same. A certain style would be altered with different colors or finishes, but they are never two the same. To complete each mask requires 10, 11, 12 hands of work.”

Ultimately, about 20,000 masks are produced by the factory annually. In addition, 10 highly designed and adorned one-of-a-kind masks are created that are not reproduced or altered.

The creative process involves handwork with clay to form a mold, with layers of papier mâché glued on. The surfaces are smoothed, bleached and painted in vivid colors, and then embellished with precious metals, gems, feathers, beads, fur, leather, lace or crystals, depending on the mask. “It’s a long process,” taking anywhere from a day to three weeks to create a mask, depending on its size, level of detail and degree of ornamentation, Angoni explains.

The Venice Art facility sits on an 86,000-square-foot site. There’s a workshop where 20 artists design and create the masks, and another five workers apply the papier-mâché. There’s also the showroom where about 2,500 masks are displayed, as well as offices.

Each day during the high season (April to September) 50 to 100 tourists visit Venice Art, typically arriving on bus tours. Smaller masks are priced from 20 euros; larger ones can cost 3,000 euros or more, and can be shipped to people’s homes.

Inside the showroom, Angoni pulls out one of his favorite masks, the “Plague Doctor,” originally worn by doctors during the 14th century Black Plague. It’s distinguished by its long beak so doctors could maintain a distance from the patient and place aromatic herbs in the beak to offset odors from the infected person.

Two centuries later, masks were worn by characters from the Comedy of Art (Commedia dell’arte) theater, such as Harlequin, Bauta, Arlecchino and Colombina, to evoke their personalities and emotions. Such masks are recreated by Angoni and his team and “are faithful to the original style of the masks,” Angoni says.

“Since I was a child, I was interested in art, literature, paintings, sculpture, and foreign language. They were windows to learn about the world. In Albania back then, you couldn’t learn about the world because of the regime,” Angoni says, referring to the repressive Communist regime that kept the country isolated from the world until democratic reforms were implemented beginning in the early ’90s.

At age 35, Angoni immigrated from Albania to Italy, where he stayed from 1991 to 1997 in Padua and Venice. He worked what he describes as “simple immigrant jobs.” Yet during his time in Italy, he was exposed to master mask makers and learned from them, awakening his artistic instincts.

Returning to Albania, Angoni converted a former tomato processing plant into his mask factory and showroom. “At the time, there was skepticism that masks made here in Albania could be exported to Italy,” Angoni says. Initially, he supplied blank papier-mâché masks without decoration to shops in Venice. “It was like an adventure, starting up this business. I didn’t know whether I would succeed or not, but I succeeded.

“The turning point was when I bought my first shop in Venice in 1999. Then year after year, the business increased, and we were creating more and more models for theaters, movie sets and stores,” including several that he bought. “Now we have seven shops in Venice and one in Las Vegas,” he says. The masks are also shipped to cities around the world, to what Angoni characterized as luxury shops selling art.

Angoni says the masks have a mystique and they invoke a sense of freedom. “People in general are predisposed to lie. So you put on a mask and you can tell the truth,” he says. “You can hide behind the truth.” He’s paraphrasing Oscar Wilde, who in his novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” wrote: “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

Historically, “Rich people, especially, wore masks to mingle with other people in disguise,” Angoni says. “They had their vices. They needed masks to gamble, or to attend parties to remain hidden in the crowd.”

Casanova, the famous womanizer, wore the “Bauta” mask, which became known as the Casanova mask. “It’s the oldest mask of Venice, about 700 years old,” Angoni says. It covers the entire face including the mouth but has a chin and jaw that protrudes out, so it’s possible to eat and easily talk.

“In a high tech era, this kind of artisan work involved in mask making is becoming rare, and this is what sustains our growth,” Angoni says. “This is an art, not an industry. It is a limited market but I am finding ways to reach art lovers.

“My main concern is how will I pass on this tradition for the future,” says Angoni, who is in his mid-60s. His son, he notes, “has taken another direction.”

“I’m concerned that all this ends up in a museum,” Angoni says. “Venice Art has been operating for 27 years. There is a family spirit among the workers. I want to pass on the tradition.

“For the sake of this tradition and for the sake of Shkodër, local policies should be drafted to support the mask factory,” Angoni says. “It is one of the most popular sites to visit in Shkodër and all of Albania.”