A RARE 'MURRINE ROMANE' BOWL, CIRCA 1936

Around the mid-1930s can be detected a strident and energetic evolution in Scarpa’s delivery of his glass forms. Whilst the earlier designs – masterpieces of technical skill, balance and of proportion – had tended to invoke the formality of the Ancient synthesised with the smoothness of surface technique, his Roman Murrine series for Venini, 1936, inaugurated surfaces that were visibly built, assembled or constructed, yielding a surface that was markedly and consciously uneven to the touch. This crafted, constructed technique was to reach apotheosis with the murrine dishes and vessels exhibited at the Venice Biennale, 1940, incorporating painterly abstractions of colour and pattern that concealed meticulous technique.