Important Design Including Post War + Contemporary Art 
5 June 2019
Important Design Including Post War + Contemporary Art 
141

Ludovico Diaz de Santillana

Cannette vase

Venini
Italy, c. 1965
transparent glass with lattimo canes 9 h × 11¾ dia in (23 × 30 cm)
estimate: $3,000–5,000
result: $8,125
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Incised mark to underside ‘Venini Italia’.
provenance: Private Collection, New York
literature: Venini Glass: Its History, Artists, Techniques, Deboni, green catalog, pg. 23 illustrates model Le Verre Venini, Deboni, pl. 169 illustrates technique

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The Cannette series, designed by Ludovico Diaz de Santillana, is in many ways emblematic of the culture present at Venini during the 1960s. Inspired by the stripes of Gio Ponti and the reduced shapes of Vittorio Zecchin and Carlo Scarpa, Cannette pieces possess the playful vitality of the sixties. Nearly psychedelic in intensity, the colorful and elongated drips seem frozen in time. This dynamic optical effect is further enhanced by juxtaposition, since the bright drips are suspended in moody, semi-transparent colors.

In the 1960s Venini was, for all practical purposes, run as a collective. After Paolo’s death, his son-in-law Ludivico was named artistic director and began to invite numerous young designers to work simultaneously at Venini, including Tobia Scarpa and Toni Zuccheri. This atmosphere of openness, creativity and collaboration would presage the world-wide studio art glass movement, and many of its progenitors would come to study at Venini in the 1970s.

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