Vittorio Zecchin

Vittorio Zecchin: Transparent Glass for Cappellin and Venini presents, for the first time, the entire glass production of Murano painter and glassmaker Vittorio Zecchin (1878-1947) at the two storied glassworks.

Between 1921 and 1925, Zecchin served as artistic director of the V.S.M. Cappellin Venini & Company glassworks, founded in 1921 by the Venetian antiquarian Giacomo Cappellin and the young Milanese lawyer Paolo Venini to offer a sophisticated, modern style of glass production. Responding to the demands of the firm and its customers, Zecchin created startlingly modern monochrome blown-glass pieces with extraordinary colors and elegant, minimal lines--a radically new style for glass that marked a decisive turning point in the 20th-century history of Murano.

Vittorio Zecchin: Transparent Glass for Cappellin and Venini reconstructs for the first time the entire collection of transparent blown-glass pieces designed by Zecchin between 1921 and 1926, first for Cappellin and Venini and then for Cappellin alone. It includes a sequence of about 900 luminous objects (from vases to compote bowls, from table services to chandeliers), painstakingly identified following rigorous research, and extensively illustrated here with new photography, plus a selection of largely unpublished period photographs and drawings. A major contribution to the history of design, this volume casts new light on the modernist master of Murano glass.