Venini: Murano Glass Spiral Chandelier in Triedri Prisms

Venini has shaped Murano glass since 1921, when Paolo Venini - a Milanese lawyer who had fallen in love with the craft - founded the house on an island that was already Europe's centre of fine glass. The Venetian Senate had moved its glassmakers to Murano in 1291, worried that Venice's wooden buildings couldn't survive the furnaces; for more than seven hundred years since, the techniques have been handed down within families, the kilns burning continuously. Venini worked with the most important designers of the era - Carlo Scarpa as artistic director through the 1930s and '40s, then Gio Ponti, Fulvio Bianconi, Tapio Wirkkala, Massimo Vignelli - and produced the glass that defined modern Murano. The triedri prism - a triangular rod of solid glass, drawn in clear and tinted variations - became one of the firm's signature components, used most famously in chandeliers from the 1960s onwards. These lights are recognisable across a room. The work is sometimes signed and sometimes not, but the prisms themselves are the maker's mark.

This chandelier is one of Venini's spiral designs. A cascade of triedri prisms in clear and warm amber descends in five tiers, the rods clipped to a chrome-finished armature that disappears within the glass; the spiral widens and contracts as it falls, holding light in faceted columns that catch and refract every available source. Lit from above, the glass throws prismatic patterns onto the surfaces below.

Light marks consistent with age. Glass in good condition. Numerous spare triedri prisms included. 

Dimensions: H 0.97m

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