Bowl in “laguna” glass, incamiciato (cased) glass with insertions of gold leaf and glass foot

Venini presented a remarkable series of vases and bowls at the 1933 Milan Triennale designed by Tomaso Buzzi, an architect who had been experimenting with the use of new materials in sculptures with essential forms, such as this bowl in laguna glass and in suffused forms with a vein of ironic surrealism. Various fish-vases and bird-bowls, hybrids between objects of daily use and figurines emerged as a result, in some ways presaging certain themes to be developed later during the 1950s by Fulvio Bianconi.

The prototype of these new productions appeared as early as in December 1932 on the pages of Domus magazine in Gio Ponti’s description of “a series of Murano glassware done in an entirely new technique that provides exclusive depth and shades of colour by the overlapping of different materials. We present the first “Laguna” wares with the mystical rosy hues of flooded marshland made on the designs by Tomaso Buzzi.”

Previously unpublished