Carlo Nason LT 359 table lamp for Mazzega, Italy 1960s

Italian glassmaker and master Murano craftsman Toni Zuccheri’s lifelong passion for nature and animals contributed to the development of some of the finest modernist works in Murano glass history. His mid-century-era chandeliers, wall sconces, table lamps and vases showcase his penchant for experimentation and exceptional skill in color and form.

Zuccheri was born in 1936 in San Vito al Tagliamento. His father was Luigi Zuccheri (1904–74), a renowned painter known for his depictions of animals (and friend of artist Giorgio De Chirico). Toni not only inherited his father’s love of the animal kingdom — particularly birds — but also his artistic talents, demonstrating an intuitive skill for drawing at an early age.

In 1945, the Zuccheri family moved to Venice. At the city’s University Institute of Architecture, Toni studied under esteemed Italian architects Franco Albini, Ignazio Gardella and Carlo Scarpa.

During the early 1960s, Zuccheri focused on the art of glassmaking and collaborated with Venini. While working with the celebrated Italian Murano glass factory, he developed an innovative type of thick window glass sheets called Vetrate Grosse with prolific Italian architect and furniture designer Gio Ponti. The glass was made of dense, vitreous pastes mixed with murrine, raw pigment, shards of filigrana cane and fine wire mesh.

Zuccheri exhibited a group of elaborate bird and farm animal sculptures at the 1964 Venice Biennale. The birds, which were accented with gold leaf, included vibrantly hued guinea fowl-shaped works with murrine bodies, turkeys, owls and hoopoes (colorful birds known for their crown of feathers). Zuccheri employed an ingenious glass layering technique to create the birds’ feathers, while their realistic-looking legs and feet were made of bronze.

Throughout his career, Zuccheri’s love of birds and animals was a recurring theme in many of his glassworks, which he created for Venini and other Italian Murano glass manufacturers such as VeArt and Barovier & Toso. Today, his work lives on in galleries and private collections worldwide.

On 1stDibs, discover a range of vintage Toni Zuccheri lighting, decorative objects and serveware.

An architect, furniture and industrial designer and editor, Gio Ponti was arguably the most influential figure in 20th-century Italian modernism.

Ponti designed thousands of furnishings and products — from cabinets, mirrors and chairs to ceramics and coffeemakers — and his buildings, including the brawny Pirelli Tower (1956) in his native Milan, and the castle-like Denver Art Museum (1971), were erected in 14 countries. Through Domus, the magazine he founded in 1928, Ponti brought attention to virtually every significant movement and creator in the spheres of modern art and design.

The questing intelligence Ponti brought to Domus is reflected in his work: as protean as he was prolific, Ponti’s style can’t be pegged to a specific genre.

In the 1920s, as artistic director for the Tuscan porcelain maker Richard Ginori, he fused old and new; his ceramic forms were modern, but decorated with motifs from Roman antiquity. In pre-war Italy, modernist design was encouraged, and after the conflict, Ponti — along with designers such as Carlo Mollino, Franco Albini, Marco Zanuso — found a receptive audience for their novel, idiosyncratic work. Ponti’s typical furniture forms from the period, such as the wedge-shaped Distex chair, are simple, gently angular, and colorful; equally elegant and functional. In the 1960s and ’70s, Ponti’s style evolved again as he explored biomorphic shapes, and embraced the expressive, experimental designs of Ettore Sottsass Jr., Joe Colombo and others.

Ponti's signature furniture piece — the one by which he is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Germany’s Vitra Design Museum and elsewhere — is the sleek Superleggera chair, produced by Cassina starting in 1957. (The name translates as “superlightweight” — advertisements featured a model lifting it with one finger.)

Ponti had a playful side, best shown in a collaboration he began in the late 1940s with the graphic artist Piero Fornasetti. Ponti furnishings were decorated with bright finishes and Fornasetti's whimsical lithographic transfer prints of things such as butterflies, birds or flowers; the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts possesses a 1950 secretary from their Architetturra series, which feature case pieces covered in images of building interiors and facades. The grandest project Ponti and Fornasetti undertook, however, lies on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean: the interiors of the luxury liner Andrea Doria, which sank in 1956.

Widely praised retrospectives at the Queens Museum of Art in 2001 and at the Design Museum London in 2002 sparked a renewed interest in Ponti among modern design aficionados. (Marco Romanelli’s monograph, which was written for the London show, offers a fine overview of Ponti’s work.) Today, a wide array of Ponti’s designs are snapped up by savvy collectors who want to give their homes a touch of Italian panache and effortless chic.

Find a range of vintage Gio Ponti desks, dining chairs, coffee tables and other furniture on 1stDibs.