Flavio Poli

In 1934 he joined Barovier, Seguso and Ferro, the company that would become Seguso Vetri d'Arte, and within three years was made partner and artistic director. It was here that the defining work of his career took shape. During the 1950s Poli developed his signature approach to the sommerso technique, a process in which successive layers of differently colored transparent glass are gathered and fused without mixing, each layer trapping color inside the next so that light passing through the object is fractured into bands of amber, aquamarine, cobalt, and green. The resulting pieces have an almost geological quality, as though you are looking into the cross-section of a mineral.

The Valva series, his most recognized body of work, takes its form from a clamshell: two asymmetric lobes of sommerso glass, one nested inside the other, the organic silhouette pulled directly from the sea world Poli had grown up beside. Alongside sommerso, Poli also worked with corroso, a technique that gives the glass surface a rough, matte finish that absorbs rather than reflects light.

Poli's work was recognized across five Milan Triennale cycles, in 1936, 1940, 1951, 1957, and 1960, and he received the Compasso d'Oro in 1954 for his sommerso series. He left Seguso in 1963. His work entered the permanent collections of MoMA in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Corning Museum of Glass, and the Museo del Vetro in Murano. He died in 1984.

At Nordic auction, Poli appears primarily through Swedish major houses, Bukowskis and Stockholms Auktionsverk together account for the bulk of the 100 recorded lots. The pieces at sale are almost entirely Seguso-period work: sommerso vases, Valva forms, and occasional lighting pieces. Prices in the Swedish market have settled in the 2,800-4,000 SEK range for typical examples, with the Valva vase and sommerso lamps at the higher end.