Venini

Venini is a glassworks on Murano, founded in 1921 as V.S.M. Cappellin Venini & C. by the Venetian antique dealer Giacomo Cappellin and the Milan lawyer Paolo Venini. From the start it worked with outside artists and architects, and lighting became a major part of its output: chandeliers with arms in the 1920s, bubble glass and modular systems in the 1930s, and large installations for public buildings, hotels and ships from the 1950s. The best-known results are the Poliedri modules of 1958, the lamps of Massimo Vignelli and the chandelier by Gio Ponti.

1921–1931: Cappellin, Zecchin and Martinuzzi

The firm was founded in 1921 with Vittorio Zecchin as artistic director. Its first chandeliers and sconces, designed by Zecchin, were made in transparent glass in muted colours and reinterpreted the Venetian chandelier of the 18th and 19th centuries; from 1922 they appeared in trade magazines and at exhibitions. Cappellin and Venini separated in the course of the 1925 Paris exhibition. Venini then founded V.S.M. Venini & C. with new partners, among them the sculptor Napoleone Martinuzzi, who was artistic director until 1931 (he left in January 1932). From 1928 Martinuzzi used pulegoso, a glass with tiny enclosed bubbles, for table, pendant and wall lamps with bell-shaped elements; examples were shown at the 1929 Barcelona exposition and the 1930 Monza Triennale. Gio Ponti wrote in Domus in February 1929 that pulegoso opened new possibilities for lighting.

1932–1947: Buzzi, Carlo Scarpa and public commissions

From 1932 the firm traded as Venini S.A. Tomaso Buzzi worked for it in 1932–33, and Carlo Scarpa from about 1932 to 1947, increasingly as the leading designer. Between 1930 and 1936 the glassworks supplied the Ministry of Communications, which was building railway stations and post offices to designs by Angiolo Mazzoni; for these it used modular lamps with undulating or cane glass, patented in 1931, with further patents in 1934 and 1935. For the Principi di Piemonte hotel in Turin (opened on 23 December 1937) it made twelve chandeliers with a metal frame and glass flowers. The company's catalogue of this period is known as the Blue Catalogue and documents models from 1921 to 1942.

1946–1959: Ponti, Bianconi, Vignelli and the Poliedri

After the war Gio Ponti designed a chandelier in transparent polychrome glass (1946–48), Fulvio Bianconi floor lamps in strong colours (1951) and, in 1951, the glassworks built the velarium of Palazzo Grassi in Venice, a ceiling of steel cables and glass spheres measuring 13 × 16 metres. In 1954 Franco Albini designed pendant lamps for the auditorium of the 10th Milan Triennale, and the group BBPR lamps for the Olivetti store in New York. From 1953 Massimo Vignelli designed a large number of pendant, table and wall lamps in opaline glass with bands or canes, inspired by Nordic design. Two of them were mentioned at the third Compasso d'Oro in 1956. The Red Catalogue (1948–1966) documents this production.

For the 1958 Brussels world exhibition the glassworks developed the poliedro, a blown polyhedron with a hexagonal section and a small metal hook, which can be assembled into large glass volumes. According to the 2022 catalogue it was developed with Ignazio Gardella, Paolo Venini and Massimo Vignelli; Tobia Scarpa contributed to the design of the hook. The chandelier in Brussels had a diameter of 2.70 metres and a height of 4.60 metres and used 1,500 elements. In 1961 Carlo Scarpa used Poliedri for the chandelier of the Veneto pavilion at Italia 61 in Turin.

1959–1985: Ludovico Diaz de Santillana

Paolo Venini died in July 1959. His son-in-law, the architect Ludovico Diaz de Santillana, took over the direction and developed the modular systems further: modules from solid canes, triangular canes (triangolo), the ghiaccioli, later called eliche, and, from 1969 in the catalogue, fiorito, esprit, trilobi, totem and cheerio. The Esprit modules, shaped like stylised flowers, go back to Toni Zuccheri. Santillana himself rarely appeared as designer; the 1970 Venice Biennale showed his Patchwork system. In 1978 Venini lit the auditorium of the Fulda theatre. Zuccheri's lamps Ninfee, Ometto, Membrane and Farfollone and the series Cor 70 for Pierre Cardin appear in the 1973 catalogue; further catalogues include lamps by Roberto Menghi, Ornella Noorda and Sergio Asti. The family left the company around 1985.

Later owners

According to the company's own chronicle, Venini was sold in 1986 to the families Gardini and Ferruzzi, then to the Royal Scandinavia group (the sale was reported in late 1997, completion probably January 1998) and, in 2001, to Italian Luxury Industries. Damiani acquired a majority in 2016 and became the sole owner in February 2020.

Design language

Venini used transparent, thin-walled glass in muted colours in the 1920s, pulegoso from 1928, and later incamiciato (layered glass), glass with canes and bands (canne, fasce), opaline and milk glass (lattimo), balloton glass (as in the Palazzo Grassi velarium) and patterned glass such as bambù, cerchi and stellare. Characteristic is the modular element: glass parts that can be combined on a metal frame into lamps or large installations.