Paolo Venini

When Cappellin departed in 1925 following a dispute, Venini reorganised the company under his own name and began steering it in an ambitious new direction. Where Murano had long traded on historical technique and ornament, Venini pushed toward clarity of form, purity of colour, and a willingness to invite outside creative voices into the furnace. The results reshaped what studio glass could be. Carlo Scarpa served as artistic director from 1932 to 1947, producing some of the most technically refined and formally inventive glass of the twentieth century. Swedish sculptor Tyra Lundgren brought a Nordic sensibility to the workshops in the late 1930s, designing animal figures and filigrana leaf series that were exhibited at the 1938 Venice Biennale to considerable acclaim. Other collaborators included Gio Ponti, Fulvio Bianconi, Ettore Sottsass, Tapio Wirkkala, and Alessandro Mendini - a roster that reads as a who's who of postwar European design.

Among the works most associated with Venini's own design hand is the Fazzoletto (handkerchief) vase, developed with Bianconi in the late 1940s. The form - a square of glass folded and frozen mid-drape - distils the relationship between material and gravity into a single gesture, and it remains one of the most copied objects in glass design history. The Inciso series, with its finely engraved matte surfaces revealing the glass structure beneath, showed the same interest in material honesty. Venini's approach consistently favoured restraint over elaboration, letting colour, proportion, and the inherent qualities of molten glass do the work.

Venini died on 22 July 1959 in Venice. The company continued under family management and was eventually sold in 1985, passing through several owners including Royal Scandinavia Group (from 1997) before being acquired by Damiani S.p.A. in 2016. The furnace remains active on Murano.

On the Nordic auction market, Venini glass is a consistent presence. Auctionist has catalogued 30 lots, with 6 currently active. Stockholms Auktionsverk handles the largest volume of Venini pieces in our database, followed by Quittenbaum Kunstauktionen and Crafoord Auktioner in Lund. The 30 items are overwhelmingly glass works - vases, lighting, bowls - with Fazzoletto and Inciso pieces appearing among the top sales. The highest recorded price in our database is 14,822 SEK for a Prisma chandelier, with Mid Century cascade wall lamps and Inciso vases regularly reaching 5,000-14,000 SEK.