Born in Murano and the son of the glassmaker Galliano Ferro, Giorgio Ferro attended the Istituto d’Arte di Venezia, dedicating himself initially to painting. He soon went to work as a designer at the Vetreria A.VE.M. where his father had become a partner after the death of its artistic director Giulio Radi (1952). His most significant work of the period is a piece called Anse Volanti, dark colored vessels with iridescent surfaces and ample handles obtained hot directly from the body, which produces a remarkable sculptural effect. When his father, Galliano, left A.VE.M. in 1955 to found his own company, he followed him to become the artistic director of the new furnace, and designed thin blown pieces as well as essentially shaped encased glass pieces. He has been owner of Galliano Ferro since 1972.

Anzolo Fuga was born on Murano. He apprenticed as a draftsman at the Cristalleria di Venezia e Murano and attended the Istituto d’Arte di Venezia, where he studied under Guido Balsamo Stella. In 1954, he opened a shop for the decoration of blown glass and the art of stained-glass windows, and it was there that he began to use sheets of Murano glass blown and decorated in hot-work: his colorful stained glass windows were successfully exhibited in several editions of the Biennale. He was director of the Abate Zanetti School of Art for Glassworkers from 1949 through 1972, and he collaborated freelance with several workshops after the late ’50s. Among them was A.VE.M., for whom he created large pieces with asymmetric shapes and abstract decor, using murrine and glass rods in almost all of his brightly colored collections. During this time, he also collaborated with Domus Vetri d’Arte and IVR Mazzega.

Franca Helg was born in Milan on February 21, 1920. She graduated from the Architecture School at the Politecnico in Milan in 1945. Her professional career, which she began independently, collaborating with Franco Albini after 1951, with Antonio Piva after 1962, and with Marco Albini after 1965, embraces the entire range of design work. She was a tenured professor of Architectural Composition III in the Architecture Department of the Politecnico in Milan. She held classes in architectural design at the Technische Universität in Munich and at the Catholic University of Córdoba in Argentina, and specialization seminars in Cuzco, Peru, in Quito, Ecuador, in Bogotà, Colombia, in Salvador de Bahia, Brasil, in Madrid, and in Barcelona. She lectured at conferences in Italy and abroad, and was a member of competition juries and evaluation committees in Europe and overseas.

Painter and designer Dino Martens was born in Venice, where he attended the Accademia di Belle Arti. In the mid ’20s he moved to Murano, where for a short time he was a partner and decorator for the glass factory S.A.L.I.R. Later he worked as a designer for Salviati & C. and its successor Andrea Rioda. His Novecento-style paintings were exhibited at the Biennale di Venezia between 1924 and 1930. Upon his return from the African War in 1939, he became artistic director of the glass factory Aureliano Toso. From 1946 to 1960, Martens designed an incredible series of works for Toso. Using traditional Venetian techniques, he was able to obtain strikingly original multicolored effects combined with particularly daring asymmetric shapes. They included the compositions of glass rods called zanfirici; colorful pieces composed with irregular shadings, and inserts of avventurina and rods of filigrana called Oriente; as well as the unusual shapes of the Sommersi with battuto finish and the inside cased with multicolored glass. His collaboration with the Aureliano Toso ended in 1963.

The son of a glassworker from Murano, Napoleone Martinuzzi was a sculptor, designer, and businessman. He attended the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, and later joined the secessionist group of Cà Pesaro, where he exhibited his sculptures in 1908. From 1917 on, he was Gabriele D’Annunzio’s favorite artist and he designed a funeral monument for him, as well as sculpture and many works in glass, which may still be seen today at the Vittoriale. Between 1921 and 1931, he directed the Museo Vetrario di Murano, and in 1925 he became a partner and artistic director at the Vetri Soffiati Muranesi Venini & C. After carrying on the concepts defined by his predecessor, Vittorio Zecchin, and creating beautifully transparent blown glass pieces, he elaborated on his own distinct style, directly derived from his experience as a Novecento sculptor. In 1928, he made his first pieces in pulegoso glass, giving life to a sculptural series of vessels with impressive shapes and vivid colors, as well as an unusual collection of cacti, fruits, and animals. After leaving Venini, in 1932 he founded Zecchin-Martinuzzi Vetri Artistici e Mosaici with Francesco Zecchin, for which he designed figures of animals and cacti, opaque vessels with classical shapes, and female nudes in solid massiccio glass. He became artistic director of Alberto Seguso’s Arte Vetro, where he made glass sculptures shaped while hot. Between 1953 and 1958, he designed chandeliers and glass tiles for the Vetreria Cenedese. In the ’60s and ’70s, he designed works produced by Alfredo Barbini for Pauly & C.

Born in Senigallia, Patrizia Molinari studied Modern Literature and Languages and Foreign Contemporary Literature at the University of Bologna. She received her Doctorate in Fine Arts at Urbino University. She started painting in 1974, researching the path of white and monochrome, and studying their interaction with light. Soon, light itself became the substance she chose to work with. She designed sculptures made with fiber optics and gun-light or glass, to her the materials closest conceptually to light itself. She designed huge installations of industrial glass—as big as 50 square meters—resting the sculptures on cutting edge splinters or placing them on the ceiling where they are then reflected in mirrors surrounded by glass-debris. Her work in Murano with Vetreria Campanella using the lost-wax process produced great projects including installations at Palazzo Ducale for Venezia Aperto Vetro 1998 and the Biennale of Venice 2001. Her series Sassi Segreti has been exhibited in Italy and London. She is renowned for these small-size Murano glass sculptures blown at canna volante, which are published in many glass books. Her work is part of the collection of major museums including the Museo Nazionale di Murano, which houses her masterpiece Mare Nostrum. Molinari won three first prizes in Open National Competitions with her glass fountains projects. She has exhibited in Italy, Europe, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States. Her obelisk of steel and gun-light, Towards Space, rests in Rome. She currently lives and works in Rome, where she has been the Chair of History of Fine Arts at the Academy of Fine Arts since 1976.

Benjamin Moore was born in Olympia, Washington. From 1970 to 1972, he attended Central Washington University in Ellensburg, Washington. He spent 1972 at the Instituto de Artes Plasticas in Guadalajara, Mexico, and in 1974, he obtained a B.F.A. with a major in Ceramics from the California College of the Arts in Oakland. In 1977, he received an M.F.A. with a major in Glass-Sculpture from the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design and began working as a designer for the Fostoria Glass Company in Moundsville, West Virginia. From 1978 to May of 1980, he worked at Venini in Murano, where his first assignment was to help the team of maestro Checco Ongaro by performing various tasks. In the spring of 1979, Ongaro offered to execute some of Moore’s designs. The result so impressed Ludovico Diaz de Santillana that Moore was asked to continue the collaboration with Venini as a designer until 1980. After several teaching positions that took him from the Niijima Glass Art Center in Japan to the Haystack Mountain School of Design to the Rhode Island School of Design, he presently serves as a Board Member at the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington. In addition, Mr. Moore owns and operates the Artist’s Glass Studio Benjamin Moore, Inc. in Seattle, Washington.

Yoichi Ohira was born in Japan and moved to Italy in 1973. After working as an apprentice at the Kagami Crystal Company in Tokyo, Ohira graduated in Sculpture from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia with a dissertaion on the aesthetics of glass. In 1973, he began working with Egidio Costantini’s Fucina degli Angeli and participated in numerous collective and personal exhibitions, presenting sculptures made with the combination of plated metal and glass. In 1987, he started a collaboration as a designer with the Vetreria de Majo in Murano. That same year, Ohira was awarded the Premio Selezione at the Premio Murano. He began working as an independent artist in the early ’90s, creating magnificent one-of-a-kind pieces, which he made in collaboration with the skillful maestro glassblower Livio Serena from Murano. He has participated in the most important international exhibitions and his works are greatly appreciated by private collectors as well as many public museums. Yoichi Ohira’s work is, today, part of the permanent collections of museums such as the Victoria and Albert Museum of London, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Koganezaki Glass Museum in Shizoka, Japan, and many others.

Born in Venice, Alessandro Pianon attended the Architecture School in Venice and used his talents to become an architect and designer. He was hired by the Vetreria Vistosi in 1956 to design the company logo and ended up designing numerous collections of glass. In 1962 he started his own design studio and worked for many companies, including Lumenform.

A designer, businessman, and ceramic artist, Flavio Poli was born in Chioggia. He attended the Istituto d’Arte di Venezia and began work as a designer in ceramics. In 1929 he switched to glass and designed animals, splendid Novecento-style nude figures in massiccio glass, as well as bowls and urns with figures resting on the inside, on lids or as handles for Libero Vitali’s I.V.A.M. He subsequently collaborated with the Compagnia di Venezia e Murano, with the furnace of Mario and Lino Nason, and with the engraver Gino Francesconi. In 1934, he accepted the artistic direction of Barovier, Seguso & Ferro, later to become Seguso Vetri d’Arte, and became partner three years later. Together with Archimede Seguso, maestro of the principal team, Poli authored grandiose lighting installations, corroded vessels, sculptures in bulicante glass, and animals in massiccio glass. These productions represented a milestone in the development of the glassworks of Murano. At the height of his artistic maturity, in the years between 1950 and 1960, he designed a series of sommerso glass pieces in a Nordic style—essential forms and sharp cold colors—which were awarded prestigious prizes (Compasso d’Oro). He left Seguso in 1963 and between 1964 and 1966, he organized the artistic glass division at the Società Veneziana di Conterie e Cristallerie.