Where corrosion is a quality feature
Detail of a Murano glass vase by Carlo Scarpa
Source: © QUITTENBAUM Kunstauktionen GmbH, 2022 Munich
Carlo Scarpa revived Venetian glass art. Without him, a great store of knowledge would be lost. Words like “corrosi” or “sommersi” make collectors’ eyes light up.
AAs a trained architectural draftsman, Carlo Scarpa might have quickly made a career with his diploma from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice in 1926. If he had lent himself to Mussolini and the fascist architecture that soon spread across Italy.
But Scarpa decided once morest it. The Venetian went into isolation, hired the Cappellin glass factory on the island of Murano, designed crystal chandeliers and lampshades and watched the glassblowers at work. Until the company went bankrupt.
Lucky for Scarpa, because when he switched to the Venini manufactory in 1932, three circumstances came together that spurred an initial career boost: the freedom to develop, the boss who recognizes talent and steers it in economically viable paths, and the working environment , in which the atmosphere is right despite the scorching heat and biting fumes.
Venini’s glassblowers are said not to have rejected a single design by Scarpa. And that’s saying something, with such a tight-knit community of highly specialized craftsmen who don’t like to be dictated to and only pass on their secrets orally and from master to master.
Some knowledge had been lost over the centuries that Murano glass was made. But Scarpa had the curiosity, the ambition, and the eloquence to uncover this forgotten knowledge. In theory at the drawing board and in practice at the melting furnace. Carlo Scarpa worked for Venini for 15 years, and he must have tirelessly experimented with the glass workers – chemists, artisans and process engineers all rolled into one. Because the list of rediscovered techniques and designs is long:
Bubbles (foam glass), submerged (colored flashed glass), watermark and fabrics (fused glass threads and rods), murrine (fused glass mosaic), lattimi (frosted glass), beaten (grinding glass) or corrosi (Etched glass) would not be part of the basic vocabulary of glass collectors today if Venini’s Scarpa era (1932–1947) had not existed.
The series corrosi presented Scarpa at the Venice Biennale in 1936. Producing corroded glass objects is very complex, because it is a special quality of glass that it is not easily irritated by chemicals. For the corrosi Scarpa first had thick-walled, archaic-looking bowls and vases blown, then melted knobs and bulges and finally etched them several times.
Carlo Scarpa, Vase in Corroso-Technik, um 1936
Source: © QUITTENBAUM Kunstauktionen GmbH, 2022 Munich
To do this, the glasses were wrapped in sawdust that had been soaked in sulfuric acid and the even more aggressive hydrofluoric acid in order to attack the surface structure and give it a slight iridescence. After the procedure, the vessels look like finds from antiquity.
The auction house Quittenbaum in Munich, which auctions Murano glass twice a year, is offering some exemplary pieces from Scarpa’s great work on February 22, 2022. Below it is a green one Corrosi-Vase (model number 4100, etching stamp Venini, estimate 9000 to 12,000 euros), if only because of its size of almost 30 centimeters. A comparable vase in red was auctioned by Phillips in London in 2016 for 23,000 euros.
Carlo Scarpa left the island of Murano as the most important glass designer of the 20th century. It was a hard turning point for the Venini manufactory. But in the end Scarpa also had to make a career as an architect.
Monumental Brion tomb in Altivole built by Carlo Scarpa
Quelle: De Agostini via Getty Images / DEA / S. LOMBARDI VALLAURI