Customer Reviews

Venetian Glass: 20th Century Italian Glass from the Olnick Spanu Collection

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I came across this book while browsing that wonderful Amazon feature: Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought. What a great buy but don't be put off by the 2000 publishing date because this is timeless art. Read the Product Details above to give you an idea about the contents but what it doesn't say is that this is an absolutely stunning book of Venetian glass (it would be nice to think that the design of this title might influence for the better American publishers of books for collectors, who turn out plenty of extremely dull looking titles every year but somehow I doubt it).

All the glass is from the Olnick+Spanu collection and they have acquired some remarkable art primarily from Italian artists but also Tapio Wirkkala (Finland) Yoichi Ohira (Japan) and some Americans: James Carpenter; Benjamin Moore; Thomas Stearns and Toots Zynsky. The Venini Company seems to have made most of the glass throughout the pages.

The book's square size, elegant typography, excellent printing (with a 175 screen) and paper make all this glass just jump from the page and it's a bit of a family effort too, because the book's designer was Massimo Vignelli (he designed the 1972 NYC subway map) with five pages devoted to his glass designs made by Venini and his son Luca took all the remarkable photos. The front of the book has various essays about Venetian glass and some Artist Statements, the back includes an excellent catalog of the featured glass, artist biographies, a workshop listing, glossary of terms (very useful as they are always referred to in Italian) and finally a bibliography, rather oddly arranged in publication year order rather than alphabetically by author.

If you like modern glass from Venice you'll be inspired by the color photos in these pages.

***LOOK INSIDE THE BOOK by clicking 'customer images' under the cover.

This is a really beautiful book. The photos are absolutely stunning, and the book is filled with a vast number of wonderfully artistic glorious colour photos of beautiful glass object. For anyone who loves glass, particularly Venetian/ Murano/ Italian glass it is a must have. Very informative also. Highly recommend this exquisite book. I love to browse through it soaking in the beautiful images. Absolutely love it!
Jo Ginever, Perth Western Australia