Suffused with light and reminiscent of a Venetian courtyard, the glass-domed atrium of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Robert Lehman wing makes an ideal entrance to “Venetian Glass by Carlo Scarpa: The Venini Company, 1932–1947,” on view through March 5, 2014. The space’s mix of historical and contemporary motifs — soaring concrete pillars, a bubbling Renaissance-era Italian fountain — echoes the visually dazzling work of the Venice-born designer and architect, who negotiated between the traditional and the avant-garde, the ancient and the modern, to thrilling effect.
This is the first American retrospective of Scarpa’s 15-year tenure as creative director of the Venini Glassworks on the Venetian island of Murano, before he became famous as the architect of projects like the now-landmarked 1958 renovation of the Olivetti showroom off St. Mark’s Square and the 20-year renovation of the Museo di Castelvecchio in Verona. Adapted from a 2012 exhibition at the Stanze del Vietro gallery in Venice curated by Marino Barovier, it features more than 300 pieces of decorative and utilitarian glassware that Scarpa designed, chronicling his experimentation with materials and color and his development and reinterpretation of various glassblowing techniques.
Venetian glass first gained renown in the 13th century, but Scarpa modernized the craft, adapting or introducing 27 glassblowing techniques and giving rise to a widespread popularity that continues to this day.
The exhibition begins in 1932, with a series of jade green vases produced through the a bollicine, or bubbles, process. The name refers to tiny, visually pleasing air bubbles trapped inside glass during blowing. Though his predecessor at Venini developed the technique, Scarpa used a bollicine to explore new vessel forms. A small vase dating to 1933, inspired by the round silhouettes of ancient Greek amphorae, features triangular side grips instead of the usual round handles; the handles’ rigid right angles protrude in contrast to the object’s round base. The measured geometry of the vase, set off by a multitude of minute, varied air bubbles trapped inside the glass, is rife with tension between organic and man-made form. The vessel seems ready to explode.
A large vase with cover from a few years later, 1938, features uneven surface corrosion that approximates the appearance of human skin. Produced through the corroso technique by the exposure of glass to various acids, the relief decorations that dot the clear glass look like swollen welts on diseased flesh. Light flecks of gold applied to the vase’s translucent glass give an unexpected luster to the curving reliefs, producing an uncanny, almost disturbing shine.
Among the last of Scarpa’s technical innovations at Venini, the a pennelate technique, treats clear glass like a stretched artist’s canvas, resulting in ribbon-like decorations that appear to be brush strokes. For a 1947 bottle with round stopper, Scarpa covered clear glass with pink and amethyst lines; the application of each line by hand created painterly flourishes that wind upward around the vessel. Produced shortly before he left Venini to devote himself to architecture, the a pennelate objects show Scarpa once again animating the material, developing ways to give it lively, dynamic forms and finishes that remain among the most sought-after qualities of Murano glass today.
Elegant display cases by the architect Annabelle Selldorf use frosted glass top panels to diffuselight shining over the objects within, and also nod to Scarpa’s own exhibition design. Like the display cubes he perched on single, slender wooden legs for the 1957 expansion of the Canova Museum in Possagno, Italy, many of Selldorf’s rectangular vitrines are outlined by wood strips and raised on thin wooden legs.
The Met’s iteration of “Venetian Glass by Carlo Scarpa,” is no wholesale reproduction of the original Italian show; mining the encyclopedic museum’s permanent collection, curators Sheena Wagstaff and Nate Cullinen display some of Scarpa’s designs alongside the types of historical glass that inspired them. Artifacts of Roman cast glass from the late first century and 19th-century exemples of its rediscovery introduce the section on murine romane, a technique Scarpa pioneered between 1936 and 1940 in which clear glass rods with colorful cores were cut into slices, the slices were melted together, and the resulting vessels were shaped with glassmaker’s tools.
The human hand, though visible in all the work on view, was not actually Scarpa’s. He spent hours in the Venini factory with the company’s expert glassmakers, observing and directing their craft but never partaking in it. But Scarpa’s exposure to artisanal work during his years at the Murano glass kilns deeply influenced his later architectural practice, as evident in his lasting dedication to craftsmanship and history, regardless of scale. The attention to detail, deeply personal understanding of Venetian culture, and innovative use of materials that would characterize so much of his architecture first found inspiration, and took physical form, in his experiments in the Venini workshop.
