.png)
Let's take advantage of the 100th anniversary of the historical Italian glass-making factory Venini to talk about the art of glass, a craft discipline that sees our territory triumph all over the world and that reigns supreme in particular on the small island of Murano in Venice.
The birth of the Venini glass factory dates back first of all to the Great War, a period in which Paolo Venini (1895-1959), a young Milanese officer with a degree in law, fell in love with Venice and its exceptional colored glass. On his return from the war after a brief period of apprenticeship in a notary's office, Paolo met Venetian antiquarian Giacomo Cappellin (1887-1968), a refined seller of Murano glass objects who had a store in Venice and Milan. The two shared the vision of proposing to the general public a new line of products made of glass that would reflect modernist aesthetics without straying too far from the Italian artistic tradition.
To the baroque elaborations chosen by the Murano masters up to that moment, the two entrepreneurs contrasted the purism of forms and experimentation with new techniques and innovative materials, all starting from an artistic repertoire based on Renaissance masterpieces and artistic products of Greco-Roman inspiration.
The dream of Paolo Venini and Giacomo Cappellin took shape in 1921 - exactly 100 years ago - when they took over Andrea Rionda's furnace, a company that boasted among its masters great Murano glassmakers such as Giovanni Seguso known as "Patare", Diego Barovier, Raffaele Ferro, Attilio Moratto and Malvino Pavanello.
Thus, a few years later, Vetri Soffiati Cappellin Venini & C. presented itself at the first International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Monza, proposing refined, elegant, and simple forms such as the Veronese vase, inspired by the painting of the Annunciation at the Venice Academy, and the Holbein two-handled vase, which was inspired by the model portrayed by the german master in his portrait of the merchant Georg Gisze.
Even after the split from Giacomo Cappellin in 1925, when the factory took the name V.S.M. Venini & C, the richness of styles, colors, and materials and the search for perfection in each piece remained the flagship of the furnace. For the years to come, Paolo Venini's great intuition remained the same, never abandoning the artistic and artisanal tradition, but constantly enriching it by crossing its path with that of the freshest minds emerging on the contemporary scene, figures from the most diverse backgrounds who were chosen for collaboration or even for artistic direction.
Tracing the names of Venini's artistic directors over the last 100 years is like reading a catalog of the history of modern design, a summary of the best names of the 20th century in Italy and the world: Vittorio Zecchin, Napoleone Martinuzzi, Tomaso Buzzi, Tyra Lungren, Carlo Scarpa, Gio Ponti, Fulvio Bianconi, Tapio Wirkkala, Timo Sarpaneva, Thomas Stearns, Ludovico and Alessandro Diaz and Laura De Santillana (son-in-law and grandchildren of Paolo Vanini who inherited the factory in the 1960s-1980s), Tobia Scarpa, Benjami Moore, Dan Dailey, Toots Zinsky, Toni Zuccheri, Gae Aulenti, Ettore Sottsass, Mimmo Rotella, Alessandro Mendini, Monica Guggisberg and Philip Baldwin, Emmanuel Babled, Doriana and Massimiliano Fuksas, Cini Boeri, Rodolfo Dordoni, Giorgio Vigna, Tadao Ando, Fernando and Humberto Campana, Flo Perkins, Fabio Novembre, Michela Cattai, Mario Bellini, Studio Job, Barber & Osgerby, Hani Rashid and Lise Anne Couture, Ron Arad and Peter Marino just to name a few. Paolo Venini himself was the artistic director of his factory in the 1950s, the peak period of his production and the last chapter of his life, which ended due to illness in 1959. But the factory never stopped and continued its prolific production.
It is difficult here to retrace all the stages of this story, which develops on the thread of one of the most celebrated arts in Italy, a centuries-old discipline that always manages to offer new ideas to artists and collectors. The secret of Venini's fortune, and in a broader sense of that of the masters of Murano, is precisely this continuous dialogue with the past that becomes a challenge and an unparalleled stimulus for contemporary style. An example? Along with the 100th anniversary of Venini, the year 2021 also marks the celebration of the 1600th anniversary of the founding of Venice, and to celebrate this event, Venini, today under the guidance of the Damiani Group, is revisiting a limited edition of the Veronese vase, the same vase created for the first time in 1921, offering an entirely new shade inspired by today's taste. In short, the marvelous exchange between antiquity and modernity keeps going for the enjoyment of collectors and lovers of beautiful and timeless things, first and foremost us.
