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Milestone Monday

On this date, November 8 in 1291, The Republic of Venice enacted a law confining most of Venice's glassmaking industry to the island of Murano. Venetian glassmaking goes back at least as far as the 9th century CE, as testified by an early record, dated 982, containing the first known mention of the name of a glassmaker. While Venetian glassmaking may have originated with the Romans, its ties with medieval Islamic and Byzantine glass production were essential to its becoming, in the 12th century, a highly refined art. By then, Venice had become the glassmaking center of Europe, but the furnaces used to make glass were a potential fire hazard to Venice’s wooden structures, so with the 1291 law, all glassmakers were impelled to remove to the cluster of linked islands known as Murano 1.2 miles north of the city center. There the industry continued to thrive and Murano remains a glassmaking center to this day.

To commemorate this milestone event, we are posting images of 20th-century glassware by the fabled Murano glassworks of Venini, from Venini: Catalogue Raisonné, 1921-1986, edited by the daughter of the company’s founder Anna Venini Diaz de Santillana and published in Milan by Skira in 2000. The name Venini is deeply rooted in the great Murano tradition of glass craftsmanship. The book is an in-depth account of the company established by Paolo Venini in 1921 and carried forward by members of the Venini family up to 1986 when the business was sold off. This comprehensive catalogue contains some 250 descriptions detailing each item produced over six decades of activity, with Anna Venini Diaz de Santillana tracing the history of the 'Vetrerie Venini' glasshouse through each successive master craftsman's term as art director: Napoleone Martinuzzi, Carlo Scarpa, Paolo Venini himself, Tomaso Buzzi, Fulvio Bianconi, and Ludovico Diaz de Santillana. From top to bottom, the works shown here are:

Villa Volpi