David Landau, the founder of Venice Glass Week, discusses how Murano is healing old wounds, and the global gaze on the city’s glass industry‘The Genezis Set’, by Péter Borkovics at The Venice Glass Week hub 2019,vessels made, he was unceremoniously thrown out of the Venetian studio by an enraged and insulted master. Ignoring the traditional craft’s prescription for symmetry and balance, his soulful, organic vessels proved too radical for the orthodox sensibilities of the artisan.
The native Oklahoman had arrived in Venice in 1960 on a Fulbright scholarship, having first seen the work of Venini in a magazine stateside. Stearns sought out the businessman and his cabal of glass masters to learn how to render in 3D the two-dimensional glasswork that he had already been producing in America. Eventually, he was able to find a young and more open-minded glassmaker to realise his visions, but the indignities didn’t end there.
His prized pieces ‘Cappello del Doge’ and ‘Facciate di Venezia’ were awarded the prestigious Gold Lion for glasswork at the 31st Biennale in 1962, but the honour was stripped when it was realised the artist wasn’t a native Italian. ‘They gave the prize to the second best,’ Landau says of the historic scandal.Sixty years after Stearns, attitudes have certainly changed. Venice Glass Week, now in its third year, is presenting a retrospective of his work as the headlining event.