Large Red Sommerso Murano Glass Fish Vase with Applied Clear Fins from 1295 Murano, Italy, 1960s

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Description

A large hand-blown fish sculpture in the Venetian tradition, made on Murano in the 1960s or 1970s.

The body is … Read more A large hand-blown fish sculpture in the Venetian tradition, made on Murano in the 1960s or 1970s.

The body is worked in sommerso: a core of deep red shading to burnt orange, cased in a heavy layer of clear glass that magnifies the colour from every angle. The tail is drawn out hot into a long, swept double fin that tapers to a fine point — the detail that separates a real furnace-made piece from a moulded one. The dorsal, pectoral and ventral fins are applied separately in clear glass and combed by hand, so each carries its own ribbed texture. The body is blown hollow and opens at the mouth, ringed in opal white — the piece functions as a single-stem vase as much as a sculpture.

Unsigned, as most Venetian export glass of the period was. Sold as Murano glass without attribution to a specific furnace.

42 cm from nose to tail — substantial and theatrical in person, the kind of object that reads as sculpture on a console rather than as a figurine on a shelf. See less