From Venini to Finiels
A century of creative exchange in Murano glass.
When Paolo Venini entered the world of Murano glass in the early 1920s, he brought with him an unusually open idea of what a glass house could be.
Under his direction, Venini became a meeting point for architects, artists and designers working alongside Murano’s master glassmakers. Carlo Scarpa, Gio Ponti, Fulvio Bianconi and Tapio Wirkkala were among the creative figures who brought their own understanding of form, proportion and colour to the furnace.
Their ideas became part of Murano’s evolving design language and helped establish a culture of creative exchange that would shape its glass throughout the 20th century.
It is a culture that continues to invite interpretation.
Silvia Finiels came to Murano glass from the world of fashion and theatre.
Trained in fashion design, she practised costume design at the Opéra Comique in Paris. That background still surfaces in her work, bringing a theatrical instinct to scale, colour and composition, underpinned by a strong sense of discipline.
Her relationship with Murano began on a much smaller scale, with glass beads and jewelry. Her fascination with the material soon extended to historic Murano glass, particularly disparate and sometimes overlooked pieces. Collecting became a way of learning - about techniques, periods, forms and the extraordinary possibilities of the material.
As her collection grew, so did the possibilities she saw within it.
Historic glass elements began finding their way into new compositions, alongside contemporary pieces made in Murano and, at times, other materials. Silvia creates one- of-a-kind light sculptures in which colour, proportion, transparency and texture acquire another dimension through illumination.
Her collection became her vocabulary.
It is a vocabulary she uses with remarkable freedom. Her aesthetic moves from exuberant to whimsical, from theatrical to even industrial, held together by clarity of composition and a visual language that is distinctly her own.
That freedom comes with discipline. Elements are selected and placed with precision; scale is controlled; colour can take centre stage or appear as a single accent. Historic and contemporary glass coexist within compositions that can be joyful, dramatic or strikingly restrained.
Through them, Silvia gives Murano’s heritage another expression. Techniques, forms and fragments carrying the sensibilities of different periods become part of works that are unmistakably contemporary and unmistakably hers.
And perhaps that is where the line from Venini to Finiels becomes most interesting: Murano remains a living design language, continually enriched by the people who learn to speak it in their own way.