The nearly fifty year tenure of Ercole Barovier as artistic director, designer and owner of Barovier & Toso is unprecedented in the history of Murano glass, and the firm’s success stands as a testament to his singular artistic talent and entrepreneurial genius.




Born in 1889 to a Muranese family that could trace its origins back to the 13th century, Barovier did not train as a glassblower but had a great passion for glass and quickly distinguished himself as an innovative designer. He joined Artisti Barovier in 1919 at the age of thirty and found success designing vases in the mosaic technique. In 1930 he produced the critically acclaimed and award-winning Primavera series, the success of which encouraged him to continue his experiments.

Born in Sondrio in 1900, Tomaso Buzzi became interested in art, design and craftsmanship at an early age. He studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano, and soon after graduation began his career designing interiors, creating theatrical stage sets and costumes, and doing graphic design for books and magazines. In 1927, he was one of the original founders of the influential Il Labirinto group along with Paolo Venini, Gio Ponti, Pietro Chiesa, Carla Visconti di Modrone, Emilio Lancia, and others. The aim of Il Labirinto was to “promote modern design for the home”. In 1932 he became art director at Venini, and though his tenure only lasted until 1934, his influence had a lasting impact on the company. From 1930 to 1950 he taught architecture in Milan, and also devoted himself to artistic and functional design, working with lighting, furniture, silver, ceramics and iron. In the 1950s, Buzzi’s tastes moved away from Modernism and back towards Neo-Classicism, his first aesthetic love. By the end of the 1950s he dedicated himself almost entirely to painting, and only occasionally took on private commissions. He died in Rapallo, Genoa, in 1981.

An icon of Italian mid-century design, Gabriella Crespi left her mark on the world both through her poetic, sculptural designs and her ethereal persona. A unique duality exists in her work combining geometric forms with sensuous lines that exude glamour while still remaining humble. Her designs are marked by fine craftsmanship, created by a skilled Milanese work force with whom Crespi worked closely with, in a range of materials including brass, bronze, glass, bamboo, and Lucite. Many of her most popular designs are unique and were released in small quantities making her pieces highly sought after.

Vladimir Kagan was an illustrious American furniture designer whose historic career spanned nearly 65 years. Born in Germany in 1927, he immigrated with his family to the United States in 1938 fleeing from the rise of the Nazi regime. He studied architecture at Columbia and later apprenticed with his father, a master cabinetmaker, in his woodworking shop. In 1949, Kagan opened his own shop in New York, shortly thereafter releasing his first furniture collection, receiving the Museum of Modern Art, New York Good Design Award for his wrought-iron chair. His work is well-known for its avant-garde craftsmanship combined with comfort and functionality. The sensuous, organic forms take on human-like characteristics through exaggerated, curved lines. Kagan’s designs are produced with varying materials including brass, acrylic, aluminum and, most notably, wood.




Over the course of his career, his work was highly sought after by celebrity clientele from Marilyn Monroe to Tom Ford, and he lent his design to projects such as Disneyland’s Monsanto House of the Future in 1964 and the Downtown Los Angeles Standard Hotel lobby redesign in 2002. Kagan lectured extensively on the history of modern furniture design at institutions including Parsons School of Design, Yale and Philadelphia University. A highly honored designer, he was elected president of the American Society of Interior Designers New York Chapter in 1990, and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, and the American Society of Furniture Designers. In 2009, Kagan was inducted into the Interior Designer Hall of Fame.




Vladimir Kagan died in 2016, leaving behind an artistic legacy and lifetime of creative achievement.

Irascible, polemical, and influential are just a few of the words most commonly associated with Italian artist, designer, critic, and theorist Enzo Mari, who is perhaps most famous for his favorite (and oft-repeated) quote: “Design is dead”. Born and raised in Cerano, a region of Piedmont, Mari moved to Milan in 1947 and worked a variety of jobs before enrolling in the prestigious Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in 1952. He studied art and literature with a specific focus on the psychology of vision, the planning of perceptive structures, and the methodology of design. Not long after graduating he met Bruno Danese, co-founder of the eponymous design brand Danese; it was an encounter that would shape the remainder of Mari’s career.




Danese and Mari both felt strongly that good design should be accessible, economic, and affordable. Mari designed a multitude of creations for the company, including the much admired 16 Animali wooden puzzle. Inspired by his own children as well as his research into Scandinavian toys, it was a toy made from a single piece of oak that, with one continuous cut, came apart into 16 separate animals. Mari went on to conceive of over 1500 designs for many premier Italian design companies including Driade, Artemide, Zanotta and Magis. He also created illustrations, books with Einaudi and Bollati Boringhieri, and works for children. One of his most memorable projects, and the one which best demonstrates his belief that design should be accessible to all, was his Proposta per un’Autoprogettazione (Proposal for a Self-design) series. It consisted of a set of diagrams that allowed anyone to build DIY furniture with cuts of pine and some nails, the instructions for which Mari would mail to anyone who sent him postage.

Born in Venice in 1894, Dino Martens studied painting and design at the Accademia di Belle Art in Rome. A talented artist, his paintings were exhibited at the Venice Biennale between 1924 and 1930. In the mid-1920s, Martens was a partner and decorator for S.A.L.I.R. and later took a position as designer for Salviati & Co. In 1939, upon returning from the African War, Martens became artistic director for the famed glass firm, Aureliano Toso.




Martens' work for Aureliano Toso has become legendary for its inventiveness, experimentation and excess. His innovative use of oversized murrines, brightly colored metallic powders and fragments of glass rods, all expressed in wildly biomorphic forms, have become synonymous with Murano glass style of the 1950s.

Born on Murano in 1892, Napoleone Martinuzzi was the son of an accomplished glass blower. He attended the Belle Arti in Venice and was part of the Ca’ Pezzaro Secessionist group where, in 1908, he began to exhibit his sculptures. Over the next decade Martinuzzi exhibited widely in Europe, eventually becoming one of Italy’s most influential Novecento sculptors.




In 1921 he became Director of the Murano Museum and in 1925, the Artistic Director at Venini. Martinuzzi’s bold use of experimental, semi-opaque glass (Pulegoso, Lattimo, Calcedonio) brought a new sculptural materialism to Murano. His use of large-scale forms from classical antiquity executed in vibrant colors set a new standard for Murano glass design.




In 1932 Martinuzzi left Venini to found his own firm, Zecchin-Martinuzzi. While the company only lasted for a few years, its highly refined production had a profound influence on Murano glass for decades to come. Between 1937 and 1947 Martinuzzi once again dedicated himself to sculpture. During the post-war period he returned to glass design and did notable works for several companies including Alberto Seguso’s Arte Vetro, Vetreria Cenedese, Alfredo Barbini and Pauly & C.




But the simple facts of Martinuzzi’s life fail to capture the lasting power of his work—his name alone evokes images of remote elegance and archetypal glory. A lasting tribute to this haute-grandeur can still be seen at the Vittoriale—poet Gabriele D’Annunzio’s lavish home and mausoleum where many of Martinuzzi’s formidable sculptures and monumental glass vessels still reside.

Japanese-born Yoichi Ohira’s distinctive stylistic blend inspired by the natural beauty of Japan and traditional Italian glass techniques brands him a major contributor to the narrative of 20th century glass design. In 1969, Ohira graduated from the Kuwasawa Design School in Tokyo and completed an apprenticeship in glassblowing at the Kagami Crystal Company, Ltd. Shortly thereafter, he began working in the fashion industry which directly influenced the balance, elegant shape, and multicolored decorative schemes of his work. From 1973–1978, while studying at the Venice Academy of Fine Arts, his love and talent for Murano glass grew earning him high honors for his thesis The Aesthetics of Glass. In the late 1980s, Ohira began collaborating with Murano master glassmakers and was awarded the Premio Selezione of the Premio Murano in 1987.




Ohira’s work is present in the world’s major collections including The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. He has been exhibited internationally including the Correr Museum in Venice, the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, and Barry Friedman Gallery in New York.

Gio Ponti excelled at painting as a child and expressed a fervent interest in the arts. Feeling that a career in architecture was preferable to that of a painter, Ponti’s parents encouraged him to pursue the former and in 1914 he enrolled at the Faculty of Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano. His studies were interrupted by war, and in 1915 he was forced to postpone his education. He served as a captain in the Pontonier Corps until 1919, earning multiple military honors. After graduating in 1921, Ponti married Giulia Vimercati, the daughter of local aristocracy and started an architecture firm. During this time, Ponti aligned himself with the neoclassical movement, Novecento and championed a revival of the arts and culture. In 1928, Ponti founded Domus, a periodical tailored to artists and designers, as well as the broader public. A shift occurred in the 1930s when Ponti took up a teaching post at his alma mater, the Politecnico di Milano. In search of new methods to express Italian modernity, Ponti distanced himself from the sentiments of Novecento and sought to reconcile art and industry. Together with the engineers, Eugenio Soncini and Antonio Fornaroli, Ponti enjoyed great success in the industrial sector, securing various commissions throughout Italy. In the 1950s, he gained international fame with the design of the Pirelli Tower in Milan and he was asked to be a part of the urban renewal of Baghdad, collaborating with top architects from around the world. His 1957 book, Amate l’architettura, is considered to be a microcosm of his work —an incredible legacy spanning art, architecture, industrial design, publishing and academia.

Tobia Scarpa has had a widely successful career with artistic outputs ranging from Murano glass and postmodern furniture to lighting and architecture. His design uses new technologies while elegantly maintaining form and function. He was born in Venice in 1935 to architect and glassmaker Carlo Scarpa whose stylistic influence would become prevalent in Tobia’s work.




While attending the Instituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice he met wife and colleague Afra Bianchin. After graduating in 1957, Scarpa apprenticed at Venini until 1961. Afra and Tobia became an incredible force collaborating on numerous important designs throughout their careers. In 1960 the couple designed and opened their office in her hometown of Montebelluna, Italy. Their most iconic designs include the Bastiano sofa (1961) for Gavina, the Soriana armchair (1968) for Cassina, the Coronado sofa (1966) for B&B Italia among many others for clients such as FLOS and Knoll International.

Ettore Sottsass is one of the most significant designers and architects of the late 20th Century, his bold and colorful, Post Modern aesthetic enlivening objects, furniture and interiors and influencing design around the world. Born in Innsbruck, Austria in 1917, Sottsass and his family moved to Turin, Italy in 1929 so he could study architecture at the Politecnico di Turino. He graduated with a degree in architecture in 1939 but he was called to serve the Italian army during World War II and he spent most of the war in a concentration camp. Upon his return in 1945, he worked for his father, Ettore Sottsass senior, an architect practicing in Turin, before relocating to Milan to curate a craft exhibition at the 1946 Triennale.




In Milan, Sottsass began writing for the art and architectural magazine, Domus. It was also here in Milan that Sottsass founded his own architectural and industrial design practice establishing a name for himself by the end of the 1950s with the design of fashionable office equipment for Olivetti. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Sottsass created radical and experimental designs for forward thinking companies like Poltronova. Sottsass’ exploration of a new visual language included collaborating with artists such as Alessandro Mendini and Andrea Branzi and culminated in the formation of the radical design collective, Memphis whose work was widely accepted and shown all over the world.




Notable architectural projects by Sottsass include the interiors of a chain of stores for Esprit (1985) and the Malpensa airport near Milan (2000). He received many awards and honors throughout his lifetime and his work has been the subject of numerous international publications and exhibitions including a recent retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Designs by Sottsass can be found in the permanent collections of many museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Paolo Venini was born in Cusano, Italy on January 12, 1895 to a middle class Lombard family. As a young man he studied law in Milan. During the first war he was stationed near Venice where he became fascinated with the glass mosaics and stained glass of St. Mark’s cathedral. After the war he began a law practice but soon came under the influence of Venetian art and antiquities dealer Giacomo Cappellin who convinced the young Venini to join him as a business partner in a new Murano glass enterprise in 1921. Since then it has become almost impossible to discuss the life of Paolo Venini as separate from his company—all the available biographical material about him lacks personal detail and inevitably lists towards the celebrated history of the company. Venini’s biography is, therefore, the story of a man whose literal personality has been subsumed by his professional life and persona.

Born in rural Illinois in 1907, Edward Wormley’s interest in design originated early in life and led him to later study at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Due to financial reasons, Wormley dropped out after 2 years and began his first job in an interior design studio before joining the Indiana-based Dunbar Furniture Company where he served as director of design for nearly 40 years.




Following World War II, Wormley became an independent consultant branching out to design textiles, globe stands, and showrooms. He designed award winning collections for Drexel Furniture Company and was included in the Good Design shows of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Characteristic of his design elements were functional engineering, decorative laminated plywood, and unconventional upholstery.




Wormley characteristically honored aesthetic qualities, following influences of Scandinavian modernism, while maintaining utilitarian qualities and “designing for the needs” of others. His work is timeless and of the highest quality. Wormley died in 1995, but his legacy is celebrated in collections including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Museum of Decorative Arts in Montreal.

Born the son of a Murano glassblower, Vittorio Zecchin would go on to become one of the most influential Venetian artists and designers of the 20th century. Initially working as a painter in the Italian Liberty (Art Nouveau) style, Zecchin’s sensitivity to international art, combined with his love for traditional Venetian craftsmanship and design, would have a lasting influence on 20th century art-glass in Venice and beyond.




After graduating from the Venetian Academy of Fine Arts in 1901, Zecchin initially decided against a career as an artist, believing that the conservative Venetian establishment would not understand or accept his work. Instead he became civil servant in Murano and did not publicly exhibit his paintings until 1908, when a number of young Venetian artists had formed the Ca’ Pessaro group. Zecchin joined the group and by 1914 he had become one of its most influential members.

Born in 1936 in San Vito al Taglimento, Toni Zuccheri was the son of renowned Italian metaphysical painter Luigi Zuccheri whose work was focused predominantly on the depiction of fantastic animals and birds. From an early age Toni demonstrated an innate capacity for drawing and possessed a great sensitivity toward nature and animals, birds in particular.




A few years after moving to Venice with his family in 1945, he enrolled in the Academy of Architecture and studied under Franco Albini, Ignazio Gardella, Carlo Scarpa and others. In the early 1960s he began to study and work at Venini where, in collaboration with Gio Ponti, he engaged in intensive experimentation with glass; the culmination was the development of Vetro Grosso, a new type of glass created from dense vitreous pastes combined with murrine, raw pigment, shards of Filigrana canes and fine wire mesh.