Murano, Venini & Carlo Scarpa

The Venetian island of Murano’s storied history of glass craftsmanship goes back centuries, but the 20th century saw the ancient artform revolutionised and redefined for the modern era by visionary Paolo Venini, and in particular his collaboration with Palefire Studio favourite, polymath architect and designer, Carlo Scarpa.

In the 1930s, Carlo Scarpa, not long graduated from his studies in architecture and design, was hired by Paolo Venini as the glassworks’ artistic consultant, and the Venini factory quickly became an epicentre for radical innovation in Venetian glass-making, ushering in a new avante-garde for the form. The collaboration, which spawned pioneering new techniques and silhouettes, also brought the artform to an international stage through showcases at the Venice Biennale and the Milan Triennale. 

During his tenure at Venini, Scarpa honoured the techniques of the Murano masters, which were famously shrouded in secrecy, while simultaneously pushing the boundaries of experimentation by looking closely at colour, tactility and use of light, and drawing on other references such as Roman mosaics and Chinese porcelain. Scarpa’s limited-run ‘a pennallate’ series used a technique that involved adding opaque shaded glass to create irregular, brushstroke lines in a process so elaborate and challenging that only a rare few examples exist. Another technique, murrine opache, of which, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, there are just 20 known existing pieces, the glass was finished to give the opaque look of ceramic.

The process of experimenting with materials so that their tactility shifts in its impression is a core component of our own practice at Palefire Studio, and part of what attracted us to working with paper pulp is that once the mould is set, it gives a sense of textured ceramic. You can especially see this take effect in our chalky Celadon colourway, available throughout our collection of sculptural lighting.