Giacomo Cappellin Biography
Giacomo Cappellin was born in Venice in 1887 and earned a well-deserved reputation as a glass entrepreneur in Murano. His experience in the glass industry was short but intense, not only for the high quality of his company's production which involved talented designers but also for the stimulating effect that his intervention had on the Murano glass industry, which was not very open to innovation at the moment. Cappellin's fortunate entry into the world of glass is due to his meeting with the Muranese painter Vittorio Zecchin, who had already tried his hand as a glass designer in the previous decade, and with the young Milanese Paolo Venini, graduated in law and eager to introduce proves his entrepreneurial skills. The famous Murano glass artist Andrea Rioda was also supposed to be part of the group as technical director, but he died in August 1921 while in December of the same year the company Cappellin Venini & C was founded. The company presented itself successfully at the 1st International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in Monza in 1923, proposing a renewed glass art that returns to the essentiality and lightness of the Renaissance while rejecting the nineteenth-century decorations prevalent at the time, with linear blown glass with delicate shades of color. Some models, to explicitly illustrate this renewal through the recovery of the best tradition, were inspired by typologies reproduced in sixteenth-century paintings, such as the "Veronese" vase (from the Annunciation of the Academy) and the "Holbein" (from the Portrait of the Merchant Georg Gisze at the Kaiser Friederich Museum in Berlin). Cappellin's production between 1925 and 1931 bears the etched signature "MVM Cappellin & C. Murano" on some glasses, always characterized by exceptional technical accuracy. Perhaps it was precisely the rigorous selection of the pieces that determined the high production costs and the extreme refinement of the style, which limited the potential clientele, together with the entrepreneur's prodigality, which caused economic difficulties. The master glassmakers sold their shares in 1929, and the glassworks ceased to function in 1931. Shortly after the bankruptcy of the Murano company, Cappellin moved to Paris, where he opened a laboratory in which about ten French workers modeled artistic bottles for the most famous perfume manufacturers such as Arden and Schiaparelli. After years of success, the business ended badly after the end of World War II. Having returned to Italy, he worked for a short period at the Richard Ginori shop in Naples, was then hosted by friends in Florence, and was finally welcomed into a retirement home for artists in Forlì. However, he preferred to return to his Venice, where he spent the last decade modestly, thanks to the help of friends and family. Cappellin died in Venice on 14 November 1968.
