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Pietro Chiesa for Fontana Arte, 1932, ‘Cartoccio’ vase in cast glass, Italy

Description
Sculpted glass vase designed by Pietro Chiesa in 1932; the manual processing makes each vase a unique piece. The vase is marked Fontana Arte on the bottom, with an adhesive label and on the basis of this it can be assumed that the production dates back to the late 1960s.
Coming from the Canton Ticino area in Switzerland, Chiesa, in 1921, after a period of apprenticeship with the glassmaker Giannotti, opened his own glass-working workshop. In the early 1920s he took part to the Monza Biennale, the Venice Biennale, the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs in Paris and the exhibitions in Cologne and Barcelona. In his work he combines extreme modernity and high technical skill. He creates the windows of the Trieste Stock Exchange, those of the Victoria motor ship and the Conte di Savoia transatlantic liner. In 1932 he was called by Gio Ponti to share the artistic direction of the newborn FontanaArte, a role that gave him the opportunity to express all his creativity, designing over a thousand different objects (furniture, tables, lamps, stained glass windows, objets d'art, etc. .). Some of these pieces have entered the history of design and are still in production today, such as the curved Fontana table (1932), the Cartoccio vase (1932), the Luminator floor lamp (1933).