Giò Ponti was born in Milan. After graduating from the Architecture School in Milan, he dedicated himself to architectural design and the decorative arts, a field to which he brought significant innovation. His furniture design and his work for the porcelain manufacturer Richard Ginori, where he was an artistic consultant from 1923 to 1938, were widely acclaimed. In 1928, he founded the prestigious magazine Domus, an effective instrument for the diffusion of contemporary architectural and figurative culture. He was also one of the founders of the group Il Labirinto, which organized the first Triennali di Monza, later to become part of the Triennale di Milano. A close friend of Paolo Venini, they collaborated in experimenting with new styles and trends (forme nuove). He commissioned several lighting installations from Venini and entrusted him with the making of major stained glass windows. In 1946, he himself designed a refined collection of glass pieces for Venini: among them is the bottle with applied spiral (also made in porcelain by Richard Ginori) and the series of colored bottles and goblets a canne.

Glass technician, designer, and entrepreneur Giulio Radi was born in Murano into a family of renowned glass technicians. His first work experience was in his father’s furnace, then in the furnace of Andrea Rioda. In 1921, he became one of the founders of the Successori Andrea Rioda, where his role was primarily administrative. He left the company in 1932 to become one of the founding partners of A.VE.M., where he became artistic director in 1939. It is here that he began an intense period of design and experimentation with glass. He devoted his research in particular to the field of metal oxides, where he discovered precious coloring techniques by using murrine and gold and silver dust on simple and suggestive shapes. His work was interrupted by his premature death in 1952. Assiduosly avoiding the camera, this is the only photo known to exist of the artist.

Born in Venice, Carlo Scarpa graduated from the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice in 1926. Soon after his graduation he began work at M.V.M. Cappellin, where he soon replaced Vittorio Zecchin as artistic director. Following the direction laid down by Zecchin, he initially created transparent blown-glass pieces with essential forms, in particular the pieces exemplified by their conic base. Scarpa later designed light glass pieces in brightly colored pasta vitrea, or decorated fenici. Deservedly famous was the refined collection of lattimi decorated with gold or silver leaf, which he presented for the first time in Monza in 1930 together with the canne verticali and millefiori glass works. Giacomo Cappellin closed the workshop in 1932 for bankruptcy, putting an end to the collaboration with Carlo Scarpa. In 1934, Scarpa became the artistic director of Venini & C., where he continued to work through 1947. Alongside Paolo Venini, who often participated in the design of glass, Carlo Scarpa experimented with the vast potential of glass, using and innovating many traditional techniques, by which he created extraordinary modern pieces. After the mezza filigrana glass works came the sommersi, the pasta vitrea inspired by Chinese ceramic motifs, the corrosi, the battuti, the vessels a fasce colorate, a pennellate, the variegati, and the famous multicolored murrine with the surfaces finished at the carving wheel. After World War II, Carlo Scarpa worked almost exclusively as an architect and teacher.

Tobia Scarpa, son of Carlo Scarpa, was born in Venice, where he graduated from the Istituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia. In 1958, he was invited by Paolo Venini to collaborate in the furnace, following in the footsteps of his father, who had worked with Venini during the ’30s and ’40s. Tobia Scarpa designed new collections for Venini even after the death of its founder, creating refined blown glass pieces exemplified by the essential quality of their design. The most successful vessels were his large Battuti vessels, the Occhi and Murrine series, for which he reinterpreted ancient Roman glass techniques. As an architect and designer, together with his wife, Afra, he has collaborated with many companies—Cassina, B & B Italia, Flos, Molteni & C., to name a few—in creating works that belong to the best tradition of Italian design. During the ’80s, he and his wife designed several glass collections for VeArt.

Born on Murano and the son of the maestro Antonio Seguso, Archimede Seguso began work at a very early age in the Vetreria Artistica Barovier, where his father was a partner. In 1933, he was one of the founding partners of the Artistica Vetreria e Soffieria Barovier Seguso & Ferro, which was later to become the Seguso Vetri d’Arte. Here, Archimede worked asmaestro of the principal team crafting the pieces designed by Flavio Poli, and later his own pieces inspired by the Novecento style. He sold his share of the workshop to his partners and, in 1946, founded a new workshop, the Vetreria Artistica Archimede Seguso, where he was first maestro and creator of almost all the works produced there. The first glass pieces were still inspired by the Novecento, as were his sculptures modeled in hot glass; at the same time he experimented with thin blown glass textured in many ways, adapting ancient decorative techniques to the styles of the ’50s such as, for example, the variations of filigrana that he presented throughout the decade (Merletti, Composizione Lattimo, Piume, etc.). During the ’60s and ’70s, he created intensely colored glass works such as the colori sovrapposti and the fasce sovrapposte, and further pushed the filigrana technique with his Spinati, and a petali glass pieces. Later on, he based his production on strong contrasting colors. Among his last works is the series of sculptures called Rotture, conceived as original works and made in solid massiccio sommerso glass, a realization of the profound reflections of this artist who later died on the island of Murano.

Born in Innsbruck, Austria, Ettore Sottsass graduated in architecture at the Turin Politecnico in 1939. In 1946 he settled in Milan and began to work in graphics and illustration. A few years later he opened his own studio. From 1949 to 1954 he designed and built several public housing projects in Turin. He was invited to participate in several editions of the Triennale. In 1958, he became a consultant for Poltronova and Olivetti, the company for which he designed the first Italian calculator, Elea 9003, which won him one of the four Compasso d’Oro awards (1959 edition) he collected during his twenty-year collaboration with the company. For Olivetti he designed office machines and typewriters such as Praxis, Tekne, and Valentine, objects whose design quality put them into the permanent collections of museums such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. In 1981, he opened the Studio Sottsass Associati, working in the fields of architecture, graphics, and industrial design. Together with Marco Zanini, he founded the Memphis Group, which pursues its objective of creating a radical iconographical update in figurative language. For Memphis, Sottsass designed furniture, lamps, and accessories, including a series of multicolored glass pieces made of elements crafted by Toso Vetri d’Arte (1982-1986). His preceding experience with glass dated back to 1974, when he designed a series of objects for Vetreria Vistosi. His interest in glass led him to design several pieces for Venini in the ’90s and several limited series of works in glass for the Galleria Marina Barovier.

Thomas Stearns was born in the United States on September 4, 1936, in Oklahoma City. From 1955 to 1957, he left his hometown to study painting at the Memphis Academy of Art. Between 1957 and 1959 he attended the prestigious Cranbrook Academy of Art and received a postgraduate Fulbright Travel Grant for Italy. He was 24 years old when he arrived at Venini. He started working after Christmas 1959 and stayed with the firm all of 1960 as well as 1961. He left Venice at the end of November 1962, and shortly thereafter the Victoria & Albert Museum in London ordered a group of his works produced by Venini. In 1964, he had his first exhibition of sculpture at the Willard Gallery in New York. In 1965, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for Sculpture and a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters. In 1968, he had a one-man show called Constructions at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida. In 1970, Stearns began teaching at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, where he was an associate professor in the sculpture department.

Lino Tagliapietra, born on Murano, was very young when he began his apprenticeship in the furnaces. In 1956, he was maestro at the Galliano Ferro workshop and after various collaborations with Venini and La Murrina, he went to work for Effetre International as artistic director in 1976. There he was able to perfect new glass textures, which he used to make extraordinary glass pieces. Since 1979, he has taught courses in Murano glass techniques at the Pilchuck Glass School in Stanwood, Washington, and in other schools in America, France, Japan, and Australia, where he has come into contact and collaborated with other glass artists. Recognized as one of the most important interpreters of contemporary glass, he experiments with the material by using glass rods which he himself composes. He creates suggestive pieces that have the most magnificent colors and finishes and that are often textured with special grindings. In the last few years, the artist has furthered his artistic development with a series of installations where the multiplication of single elements, complete in and of themselves, creates a new expressive language. More recently, he has used glass to obtain large panels composed of thick rods, sectioned in different ways, which are laid down to form a brightly colored fabric with an effect comparable to extraordinary pictorial works. His works have achieved widespread acclaim and are part of the collections of major international museums such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and others.

Born on Murano, Ermanno Toso began to work at the Fratelli Toso workshop in 1924, where he was later to become a partner. In 1936, he was named artistic and marketing director of the company. During the period preceding World War II, he created thick glass pieces using traditional decorative techniques that were characterized by simple and solid shapes inspired by the Novecento style. During the ’50s, he created a collection of extraordinarily lightweight glass pieces based on a modern interpretation of classical techniques, such as filigrana and murrina. During the ’60s, his creative talent led him towards an absolute multicolored sobriety.

Born in Milan, the entrepreneur and designer Paolo Venini was a law school graduate. From 1921 until he died, he dedicated himself to the workshop he founded, the Vetri Soffiati Muranesi Venini & C. (through 1925, Vetri Soffiati Muranesi Cappellin Venini & C.). A man of marked entrepreneurial talent, his goal from the very beginning was to expand his company’s influence abroad and he sought the collaboration of the most talented artists and architects of his time, employing them as artistic directors of his company. He always worked at the side of his designers with the goal of anticipating and directing taste. He personally checked every collection produced by his furnace. And his confident aesthetic choices, along with the fine quality of the products, assured his workshop both critical and commercial success. He dedicated himself personally to design from the ’30s: his Diamante glass pieces date from 1936, and he created the murrine romane in collaboration with Carlo Scarpa. Following the war, he created bottles with brightly colored stripes, vessels in mosaico zanfirico and mosaico tessuto, glass mosaic windows, and engraved vessels. In collaboration with Bianconi, he created vessels such as the fazzoletti, which are a classic example of the production of the ’50s, and were enormously successful.