Carlo Scarpa for Venini: Reticello Pendant, c.1970s

Carlo Scarpa arrived at Venini in 1932 as artistic director. He was twenty-six years old, Venetian by birth and by sensibility, and already possessed of an eye that would eventually reshape how the world understood the relationship between architecture and material. Over the fifteen years he spent working with Venini, he reached back into the oldest traditions of Murano glassmaking and found techniques that had been largely abandoned - reticello among them.

Reticello is not a finish. It is a construction. To achieve the fine internal netting that distinguishes these pieces, a glassblower must gather two separate molten forms, each containing threads of glass running in opposite directions, and combine them into a single vessel before inflating. The threads cross. At each intersection, a tiny air bubble is trapped. The resulting lattice - visible inside the glass, never on its surface - cannot be faked or approximated.

This pendant, attributed to Scarpa and Venini, carries that lattice suspended in a frosted single shade, hung from a brass rod with a ceiling rose of the same metal. 

A fine hairline crack runs vertically across the shade - visible on close inspection. It does not affect the structure of the piece. 

Fully rewired to Australian electrical standards.

H 80cm × Diameter 25cm.