The Manufacturer
Venini
Founded on Murano in 1921, Venini turned Venetian glassblowing into a modern design house, and remains the most important name in 20th-century Italian glass.
Founding & History
From a Milanese law office to Murano's most important furnace
Venini began in 1921, when a Milanese lawyer, Paolo Venini, and Venetian antiques dealer Giacomo Cappellin founded a glasswork under the name Vetri Soffiati Muranesi Cappellin Venini & C. The partnership dissolved in 1925. Cappellin left to start his own firm, and Venini reorganized independently as Venini & C., the name the company still carries today.
What followed was decades of continuous reinvention. Ownership passed through Venini's own family, then to the Gardini and Ferruzzi families, and later to Italian Luxury Industries. Since 2020, Venini has been wholly owned by the Damiani Group, with architect Marco Piva appointed artistic director in 2023, tasked with drawing new work from the company's own historic archive.
The Founder
Paolo Venini: "l'avvocato"
Paolo Venini was born in 1895 near Milan and trained as a lawyer, not a glassmaker. Stationed near Venice during the First World War, he became captivated by the mosaics and stained glass of St Mark's Basilica. On Murano, where he was neither Venetian nor a hereditary glassworker, he was known his whole life as "l'avvocato," the lawyer, or "il forestiero," the outsider.
That outsider's eye became his genius. Rather than run a traditional guild workshop, Venini built a design house, inviting architects, sculptors and painters to work directly beside Murano's master glassblowers, and often serving as the final critical eye on any new piece before it went into production. He died in Venice in 1959,
having permanently changed what Murano glass could be.
"Take the Murano tradition of glassblowing, and combine it with the fashion industry's tradition of using designers."
— Paolo Venini
Venini Glass Techniques
Fazzoletto
"Handkerchief": the rim is folded and flared so the finished piece looks like fabric caught in the wind. Venini's most iconic form, designed with Fulvio Bianconi.
Pezzato
"Patchwork": blown from fused rectangular tiles of colored glass, giving a stained-glass, quilt-like effect. Caused a sensation at the 1950 Venice Biennale.
Murrine
Patterns built from cross-sections of multicolored glass canes, fused together. "Murrine romane" were developed by Paolo Venini with Carlo Scarpa.
Battuto
The cooled surface is wheel-ground into shallow facets, giving a soft, "hammered" satin texture. A Carlo Scarpa signature.
Inciso
Fine, dense parallel wheel-cut lines give the surface a matte, silky, striated finish, another Scarpa-era treatment.
Sommerso
"Submerged": layers of transparent colored glass make one color appear suspended within another. Introduced by Scarpa in 1934.
Filigrana / Zanfirico
Clear glass rods threaded with fine colored filaments, twisted and fused. Renaissance Venetian technique Venini revived and perfected.
Incalmo
Two separately blown bubbles of different colors are joined while still hot, creating clean horizontal color bands with no visible seam.
Pulegoso
Glass made semi-opaque by a dense mass of tiny internal bubbles. Invented by sculptor Napoleone Martinuzzi around 1928.
Who Designed For Venini
A Century of Collaborators
| Carlo Scarpa | Art Director, 1932–1947 | The pivotal figure in Venini's history. Developed or perfected sommerso, battuto, inciso, murrine romane and tessuto — roughly thirty distinct glass techniques. |
| Fulvio Bianconi | from 1947 | An illustrator by training, he became the face of postwar Venini with the Fazzoletto and Pezzato lines. |
| Napoleone Martinuzzi | Art Director, 1925–1932 | Sculptor who invented pulegoso glass and produced monumental, sculptural vases and figures. |
| Gio Ponti | 1940s–50s | Architect and designer of Venini's striped "a canne" glassware and two-color stoppered bottles. |
| Tyra Lundgren | from 1936 | Swedish artist and the first woman to design for Venini — known for leaf-shaped dishes and glass birds. |
| Tobia Scarpa | from c. 1958 | Son of Carlo Scarpa; created the "Occhi" ("eyes") murrine series. |
| Tapio Wirkkala | from 1966 | Finnish designer behind the minimalist "Bolle" (bubble) bottles and refined incalmo work. |
Held In Permanent Collections
Found In The World's Great Museums
Venini glass is part of the permanent collections of, among others:
