Italian Glass

CORNING, N.Y. - The history of glassmaking in Italy is one marked by centuries-old traditions, unparalleled creativity, internecine rivalries and fluctuating fortunes.

In the Twentieth Century, its drama has played out in a volatile marketplace populated with competitive dealers, contesting authorities and scholarly debates.

Were the objects themselves not so exceptional, their history might be a Pandora's box not worth opening. However, notwithstanding the problems of dating, attribution and evaluation that plague curators, dealers and collectors today, the glass designers and craftsmen of Murano's factories have consistently produced some of the most beautiful objects ever created from this extraordinary material.

The first comprehensive exhibition of this diverse output can be seen at the Corning Museum of Glass through October 26. "Italian Glass, 1930-1970: Masterpieces of Design from Murano and Milan" showcases that country's glass production during its most innovative and successful years. The input of artists and designers spearheaded the industry's leap into modernism, helping to establish a new image for Italy on the international scene. Some 200 works of mid-century glass from the collection of the Steinberg Foundation in Liechtenstein have been assembled by the Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf in Germany, where the exhibition opened last year.

"Its debut marked "the first time ever that pieces of such quality have been exhibited to the public, even in Milan," says the original exhibition's coordinator, Helmut Ricke, director of the Kunstmuseum Dusseldorf and curator of the Glasmuseum Heintrich.

Until the current exhibition and the comprehensive book that accompanies it, there has been little substantial documentation about works of this period, points out Susanne K. Frantz, Corning's curator of Twentieth Century glass.

Although the Corning presentation, due to space constraints, is about one-fifth smaller than the original show, its scope and quality have been maintained.

The exhibition includes exemplary objects by such celebrated designers and artisans as Ercole Barovier, Carlo Scarpa, Dino Martens, Archimede Seguso, Fulvio Bianconi, and Flavio Poli, from factories including Venini, Fratelli Toso, Gino Cenedese, Fontana Arte, and others. Venini, however, as the largest, most sophisticated and most stylistically innovative firm operating throughout this period, understandably dominates the presentation, with works by Paolo Venini himself as well as the many designers and artists who were employed by or collaborated with the factory.

Viewing the exhibition, it is difficult to believe that this type of glass was once of little interest to the American market. During the past decade or so, though, the revival of mid-century design has led to a re-examination of glass made during these years by both the Scandinavians (whose development was parallel, but whose aesthetic was altogether different) and the Italians. The market has more than made up for its earlier oversight, most particularly regarding Italian glass, whose spectacular shapes, vivid colors, and unique decorative effects have enabled the best works of this period to command prices in the five-digit range.

The unique properties of glass give it greater flexibility than perhaps any other material. It can be blown, cast, or worked by hand. It can be shaped in organic, geometric, abstract or representational forms. It can be assembled with glue or mechanical means into objects that are purely utilitarian or purely art forms, and it creates optical effects, which enable an object to vary according to the angle from which it is viewed. It permits endless colorations, singly or in any combination, and the range of surface finishes and decorative effects is limited only by the ingenuity and technical skill of the maker. In this last area, the Italians have led the field for centuries.

Since the time of the Romans, Italy has been the major center of creativity in glass. In Venice, the practice of the craft dates back more than a thousand years, when the city was settled by glassmaking emigres of Acquilleia, in flight from the barbarians. The trade flourished under a guild system in medieval times, when a new cultural climate and the invention of crystal by Angelo Barovier created a demand for objects to furnish the homes of the privileged. New techniques, and ingenious forms of decoration made Venetian glass celebrated throughout Europe. By the Eighteenth Century, however, political upheavals, as well as competition from Northern European glass producing areas (started mostly by transplanted Venetian artisans), led to a decline in the trade.

It was only in the second half of the Nineteenth Century, led by Antonio Salvaiti, that the industry began its return to prominence. Fear of fires had led to the ghetto-like seclusion of glassmaking operations on the island of Murano, where most of the factories remain today. It remains a relatively closed and hotly competitive community, where both creativity and copying are rampant.

In the early years of this century, most of the designs emanating from Murano were essentially reminiscent of previous styles, reflecting the Renaissance rather than Art Nouveau or Le Style Moderne. Shapes were conventional and ornament, generally furnace-formed, and merely a more sophisticated version of what we today think of as filigree-bedecked "tourist art." The dramatic changes only began in the 1930s. Italian designers, in their search for modernism, broke with the traditional expressions - objects that were delicate, translucent, elaborately ornamented, and characterized by soft (if any) color - with which Venetian glass had become identified. These changes, building on its firm historic foundation, infused new life into the industry.

In 1921 Paolo Venini, a Milanese attorney, with partner Giacomo Capellini, had established the factory that would spearhead the move to a new aesthetic for Venetian glass. Other new firms followed and, after World War II, an explosion of creative output was poured into these factories' efforts, as design became a tool through which to rebuild a war-devastated economy.

Adopting the practice introduced in Sweden in 1914, first Venini and then its competitors retained outside artists to work with the factory glassblowers Ï today, glass is a material which is rarely conceived and executed by the same person. This new approach resulted in an influx of innovative works that brought Italy international attention, and prefigured the country's subsequent achievements in furniture and industrial design.

It was Napoleone Martinuzzi, primarily, working at Venini in the 1930s, who began to experiment with a new look of thick, weighty pieces, with textured finishes, and tiny bubbles that created an almost opaque look. After him, Carlo Scarpa conceived intricate patterns using slices of mosaic canes, and sleek forms with acid-treated surfaces that continued to vary the conventional smooth surfaces of glass. In the postwar years, glass took on brilliant colorations and unconventional shapes, as Fulvio Bianconi, Archimede Seguso, Alfredo Barbini and others created objects inspired by the forms and hues of abstract art.

During the 1950s, Murano was a magnet for artists and designers from other countries. They sought inspiration and technical understanding of the glassmaker's art, and left to apply their knowledge and spread the new aesthetic of glass. Among these were Dale Chihuly, who later founded the Piltchuk School in Seattle; Massimo Vignelli, who designed a collection of lighting for Venini; and Thomas Stearns, who prodded the glassblowers at Venini to realize his layered-color "incalmo" sculpture through a technique not thought possible with glass. These and others helped to spread the reawakened interest in glass into other countries, and ultimately facilitated the development of the studio glass movement.

Though spanning 50 years, the Corning exhibition focuses on objects by some of the most celebrated Italian glass designers during the 1950s, the period which saw the full flowering of talents, as they developed an expression which eschewed pure functional forms, yet was undeniably modern in its approach and adventurousness. Displayed against light backgrounds framed by dark walls and floors, the works of glass glitter like brilliant jewels in the galleries, seducing the eye with lustrous color and almost sensual appeal. The exhibit opens with the Pietro Chiesa "Cartoccio" vase of 1935, whose wavy-edged form predates Alvar Aalto's celebrated "Savoy" vase and anticipates the whimsical randomness of Bianconi and Venini's lacy "Fazoletto" vases of 1949 (All of the dates cited are those of the original design - many of the objects, or their descendants, were produced for many years, and some are again in production).

From this, the exhibition moves to early 1930s opaque glass, showing the plastic effects characteristic of Novecento design on to Carlo Scarpa's innovations at Venini, including a 1936 acid-etched vase modeled after a land-mine, and his celebrated 1940s red/white and black "murrine" pieces, in which even the solid grounds are formed entirely from tiny tessarae (slices of mosaic).

There are examples of Barovier's bold colors, applied to heavy blown forms in modern-art motifs, and Venini's post-war "murrine" classics in typically 50s shapes, with intricate geometric patterning using anes and tesserae. There are a number of works by Bianconi, for Venini and other manufacturers, including his familiar "Commedia d'Arte" figures, as well as vases with intricate lacework, and the much-copied fused-class color-block and plaid effects, for which Venini coined the name "pezzato."

There are Poli's weighty and sculptural works that applied Italian colors to Scandinavian-influenced forms. The mutual exchange occurred at the Triennales in Milan, where Poli's work won grand prizes throughout the 1950s - including a rare 1952 "siderale" vase for Seguso, whose concentric rings of color create an optical illusion.

From Archimede Seguso, there are exquisite "a merletto" vases made with the lace-like decorative technique that the artist developed. Dino Marten is represented with the chiaroscuro-colored, idiosyncratic shapes for Aureliano Toso that were not popular when first made, but are highly collectible today.

There are also examples of Tapio Wirkkala's designs for Venini, which apply bold colors to spare Scandinavian-type forms; Miroslav Hrstka's mold-blown pieces with intricately cut-and-ground surfaces; Ermanno Nason's freehand abstractions with gold grounds or glass thread; and distinctive sculptural works by Erwin Burger.

In the 1960s, Murano glass moved away from its distinctive use of strong colors. The change met with less success, since it was for color that Murano glass had become celebrated. However, the factories continued, as they do to the present day, experimenting in the development of new techniques and concepts for creating objects in glass. As might be expected, the glass artists found creative inspiration outside their own country. In addition to decorative motifs drawn from artists such as Miro and Picasso, several works of the 50s are molded with openwork areas, reflecting the pervasive influence of sculptor Henry Moore.

On May 30 and 31, a two-day symposium was organized by The Corning Museum in connection with the exhibition, bringing a number of leading experts on Italian glass to discuss the history and the challenges of the genre, which has been increasingly the focus of attention and collecting interest in the past decade. Discussions during the symposium brought up the difficulties of authenticating and dating objects that now plague even the experts.

The problems, as Helmut Ricke pointed out, are attributable to several factors: the making of glass by factories from designer's drawings without the designer's supervision, which enables variations in size, color or form; the reinterpretation of old designs by factories many years later; the decades-long, continuous production of popular models, allowing watering-down of the original as practices of techniques and finishing change; the revival of old models for the collector's market and the frequent imitation (or outright forgery) of successful models by smaller firms.

Further compounding the difficulties, signature practices were irregular and inconsistent (and glass is easy to sign after the fact); craftsmen often worked for several factories; and some factories produced under contract to larger firms. Moreover, old and new materials are sometimes used in combination, as when special elements such as the "murrini" made by Toso were purchased for use by others, or when glassmakers take samples from one factory to a new location. Also, such details as age and composition of glass are discernible, if at all, only through costly and infrequently used photo luminescence technology.

Many scholarly publications contain inaccuracies. Even the exhibition catalogue, which refers to objects as mold-blown, has been since found incorrect, as almost everything made through the 1960s was free-form.

Opening a glass factory involves relatively little investment in space and facilities Ï the only requirements are raw materials, a furnace and a bench, and the artisans to work with them. There are some 250 registered factories in Murano, most of which are very small operations, and artisans in these studios frequently copy techniques using filigree canes and color granulation. Although Venice, several centuries back, passed the first copyright laws, the Murano community regards design as common property. Nowadays, virtually all production glass makes use of molds, which of course, facilitate quantity production of goods, authentic or forged.

When Murano glass became collectible, some factories responded by reviving classics, others by copying them, and by the mid-80s, the market was flooded with examples of what was certainly Italian glass, but less certainly what it professed to be in terms of date, designer and producing factory.

Swedish glass, contemporaneous with the Italian pieces, are easier to authenticate, since manufacturers published catalogues and virtually all objects were signed. These are not yet commanding the high prices of the Italian works, and it is price that creates the complex and competitive market for the latter.

What this means is an unqualified caveat emptor for glass collectors. Without having seen it produced, or lacking irrefutable provenance, the purchaser has virtually no guarantee that modern Italian glass is what it professes to be. Even experienced dealers admit to being fooled, but suggest that, as with any work of art, looking at as many objects as possible is the best possible education. Technical precision is perhaps the only, criteria for judgment when evaluating these exceptional and desirable works.

According to Corning Museum of Glass Director David Whitehouse, the Italian glass exhibition exemplifies the museum's most important objectives, in not only documenting a significant time and place, but also and providing "an intellectual backbone" for visitors. The museum, he points out, was founded in 1951 as an educational institution, chartered by the Board of Regents of the State University of New York. Boasting the world's largest comprehensive collection of glass (some 30,000 pieces) as well as a library of more than 70,000 volumes, it draws scholars from all over the world. They make use of its extensive resources, the newest of which is a studio that, under the supervision of a skilled staff and celebrated guest artists, trains young artists and glassblowers in glassmaking techniques.

Corning Glass Center, and the museum, are currently undergoing a five-year expansion and renovation project that will culminate in a 50th anniversary celebration in 2001 ... an occasion surely not to be missed by any admirer of the medium. "Italian Glass; Murano-Milan, 1930-1970" will next travel to Japan.