Lino Tagliapietra
Italian, born 1934Bilbao, 2000
On view
Blown and cold-worked glass
Dimensions17 × 7 1/2 × 11 in. (43.2 × 19.1 × 27.9 cm)
Courtesy of the Isabel Foundation, L2017.116
Growing up in Murano, Italy, Lino Tagliapietra was a prodigy in the art of glass, he started working in a factory at age eleven and by twenty-one he had earned the title of Maestro, or master. This vessel was created using the blown glass technique. One of Tagliapietra’s most significant contributions to the studio glass movement was his desire to share knowledge. For generations, glass artists in Venice and Murano closely guarded their techniques from the rest of the world but Tagliapietra believed in collaborative learning. He traveled throughout the world introducing Italian glass techniques to generations of glass artists, including a temporary teaching position in 1979 at the recently established Pilchuck Glass School near Seattle, Washington.