The first objects produced by Zuccheri at Venini were, unsurprisingly, sculptures of fantastic birds—owls, turkeys, guineafowl, hoopoes and others—all rendered in sophisticated polychrome murrine and experimental glass pastes. Mounted on realistic bronze legs, the first group of these was presented at the Venice Biennale of 1964 and met with great success. Both expensive and difficult to make, these birds, like much of Zuccheri’s work for Venini, were presented as virtuoso sculpture and were proudly displayed by Venini in their shop windows and presented at important Italian and international exhibitions. Over the next four decades Zuccheri would continue to create sculptures of birds, both for Venini in glass and, later in life, as one-off sculptures made from of a wide variety of materials.

Today, taken either as fine art or as high design, Zuccheri’s birds for Venini occupy a unique place in the history of Murano glass; grotesque and beautiful, realistic and highly imaginative, experimental and vastly accomplished, the sculptural birds of Toni Zuccheri for Venini are works of artistic genius.