Large
hand-blown Murano Venetian art glass vase by Alfredo Barbini (Italian,
1912-2007)
Pink and burgundy wine colored bulbous body in the cluthra glass
blown style with layers of trapped bubbles.
Hand etched signed BARBINI
MURANO towards bottom
MEASURES: ht. 27 cm, dia. approx. 26 cm at the widest part.
Alfredo
Barbini, a glass
artist born in 1912 on the islands of Murano in the lagoon of Venice.
Was one of
Murano's leading figures of the twentieth century. His parents were members of
families which had been prominent in the glassmaking industry on Murano for
generations as glassblowers and beadmakers.
Barbini
began his long career in 1925 at the age of 13, working in the S.A.I.A.R. Ferro
Toso factory. In 1929 he joined Cristalleria di Venezia e Murano as a master
glassblower. He left that firm in 1932 for employment with a glass workshop in
Milan, but returned to Murano to work first at the newly formed Zecchin &
Martinuzzi firm and then with Seguso Vetri d'Arte. From 1936 to 1944 he was a
partner and master glassblower at Societa Anonima Vetri Artistici Murano, known
as S.A.V.A.M.
Following
World War II Barbini worked as master glassblower and designer successively
with Archimede Seguso and Napoleone Martinuzzi, then became a partner
with Vetreria Vistosi and, later, Gino Cenedese. With
financial assistance from the firm of Salviati & C., for whom he produced
products, he formed in 1950 his own glass firm, Vetreria Alfredo Barbini
(reorganized in 1983 as Alfredo Barbini Srl). His firm exhibited his work at
the Venice Biennales from 1950 to 1961. He passed away in 2007.