Mid-century “zinia” Floor Lamp By Toni Zuccheri For Veart, 1970s

Mid-Century Italian "Zinia" Floor Lamp by Toni Zuccheri for VeArt, 1970s

Exceptional floor lamp featuring an artistically designed mouth-blown Murano glass shade and a sleek, newly nickel-plated base. The dynamic, clean design of the glass shade is the main feature of the lamp, which rests on a simple pedestal base.

TONI ZUCCHERI 1936-2008 Italian glassmaker and Murano master glassmaker Toni Zuccheri, with a lifelong passion for nature and animals, created some of the finest modernist works in the history of Murano glass.
His mid-century chandeliers, wall sconces, table lamps, and vases demonstrate his experimental spirit and exceptional talent for color and form.
Zuccheri was born in San Vito al Tagliamento in 1936. His father, Luigi Zuccheri (1904-1974), was a painter renowned for his depictions of animals (and a friend of the artist Giorgio De Chirico). From his father, Toni inherited not only his love for the animal world, especially birds, but also his artistic talent, demonstrating an intuition for drawing from an early age.
In 1945, the Zuccheri family moved to Venice. At the city's University Institute of Architecture, Toni studied under the renowned Italian architects Franco Albini, Ignazio Gardella, and Carlo Scarpa. In the early 1960s, Zuccheri devoted himself to the art of glass, collaborating with Venini. Working with the renowned Italian glassmaker Murano, he developed an innovative type of thick window glass he called Vetrate Grosse, along with the prolific Italian architect and furniture designer Gio Ponti. The glass was made from dense vitreous pastes mixed with murrine, raw pigments, filigree cane shards, and fine metal mesh. Zuccheri exhibited a group of elaborate sculptures of birds and farm animals at the 1964 Venice Biennale. Enhanced with gold leaf, these works included vividly colored guinea fowl, turkeys, owls, and hoopoes (colorful birds known for their crowns of feathers). Zuccheri created the birds' feathers using a sophisticated layered glass technique, while the realistic-looking legs and feet were fashioned from bronze. Throughout his career, Zuccheri's love of birds and animals was a recurring theme in many of his glass pieces, which he created for Venini and other Italian Murano glass manufacturers such as VeArt and Barovier&Toso. Today, his works are exhibited in galleries and private collections around the world.