About Malbi Decor

Imagine having your own, personal team of Italian interior designers.

Italy is well known for its thriving artisan industries, but many Italian artists and designers do not export across the Atlantic. Their products are often “single material,” and each artist uniquely represents the traditions, origins, and culture of Italy. Now, with the opening of Malbi Decor in Sarasota, downtown shoppers might think they’re actually strolling the streets of Venice or Florence, instead of Sarasota, Florida.

Malbi Décor is certainly the closest you’ll get to authentic Italian home decor, without the pesky jet-lag. Luckily for Sarasota, Malbi Decor’s owners, Maria Alberta Borri and Federico Zini, put in the legwork so you don’t have to! Together, this husband and wife team travel multiple times per year to Italy to hand-select the finest Italian home decor products, and bring them back for you to purchase at their downtown boutique and online shop.
Malbi Decor Owners, Federico Zini and Maria Alberta Borri

Italian Artisan Decor in the Heart of Sarasota

Located on Sarasota, Malbi Decor offers a variety of imported products from one-of-a-kind, handmade glassware to table linens and flatware. The boutique functions as an art gallery and event space, with artist showings and interior decorating demonstrations.

MALBI DECOR offers high quality Italian home products. The majority of its products will be made of only one material, and each will represent the traditions, origins and culture of Italy. Such special items are expressions of the artistic imagination and evoke some kind of feeling or emotion. Every item also reflects its history and the background of those who created it.

Italian Brands at Malbi Decor

A main product line will be dining and entertaining. This line includes high-end Italian tableware, cutlery, and ovenware, as well as other items. The following are some examples of items available at the Downtown Sarasota boutique:

Massimo Lunardon

Artistic venetian glasses hand made, his artistic carrier begins in 1988 with the opening of his own workshop after years of apprenticeship in glass furnaces. The need of challenging the technical limits of glass has generated a rich and intense collaboration with many established artists and designers. This experience has also affected his own knowledge of glass blowing and has given him the chance of showing the results of his research in solo and group shows. These activities have been accompanied in the past few years by the decision of sharing his own experience through workshop and by teaching at art school.

Ashanti Cutlery Collection

The Ashanti Cutlery Collection represents a unique alternative to the classical silver cutlery. In the high-end cutlery market, Ashanti combines the precious metal parts in forged steel and Mebatech® material, with its beautiful aesthetic and tactile effects. Ashanti products represent an expression of Italian quality and refined taste that make the table regal and elegant in all occasions. All products are made exclusively in Italy.

IVV Industria Vetraria Valdarnese

IVV is known as one of Europe’s leading manufacturers of handmade blow glass, combining its Tuscan roots with innovative research, design, traditional artisan techniques and strict process controls to create objects that provide a new sense of style to the home and table. Each IVY product is made by hand and truly distinctive. The manual treatment infuses the form with lightness and energy that only artisan passion can achieve.

Sambonet

Cutlery collection. In 1856, Giuseppe Sambonet, a Fine Arts graduate and the son of a nobleman from Vercelli, obtained his warrant as Master Goldsmith and established the company, Giuseppe Sambonet, depositing his seal bearing the initials “GS” at the Turin mint. At the beginning of the twentieth century his company was the Official Purveyor to many noble families, including the Duchess of Genoa and the Count of Turin.