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"Since the late 1990s, pieces by recognized modern masters of Italian glass such as Carlo Scarpa have routinely sold for six figures. This past June, Scarpa\u2019s circa-1935 Rilievi vase took $81,700 at Wright in Chicago, earning the architect the top spot at the house\u2019s record sale of the Frank Toskan collection. But the work of designers like Toni Zuccheri, a generation younger than the mid-century greats, is also being reappraised.Indeed, Zuccheri, acclaimed in the 1960s and \u201970s but less appreciated today, and his expressionistic designs, especially his bestiary of odd and humorous birds, have hit the radar of savvy collectors tired of the dead-serious restraint of the modernist classics, outpriced at the top of the market, or fleeing the proliferation of fakes.\u201CColorful violence\u201D is how Zuccheri\u2019s output was characterized by Alexander Heminway, design director at Phillips de Pury &amp;amp; Company in New York, which holds the auction record for a Zuccheri piece: a phoenix sold in 2009 for $110,500 against a presale estimate of $45,000 to $55,000. Much of the artist\u2019s output remains eminently affordable. A bowl and a vase from the Toskan collection, for example, went unsold and were available after the auction for $2,500 and $2,800, respectively.David Landau, a Venice-based collector who with his wife, Marie-Rose Kahane, has 40 Zuccheri designs in? a collection of roughly 1,500 pieces, calls them \u201Cbeauty out of madness, drawn in glass.\u201D Landau points out? a further attraction of Zuccheri\u2019s? work: \u201CThere are no fakes.\u201D According to the collector, \u201CNo one would? dream to make one because of the techniques, which haven\u2019t been used since.\u201D Landau, who is one of the sponsors behind Rooms for Glass, a new permanent exhibition center that opened in Venice last month, says Zuccheri will have an exhibition there in 2015 or 2016, further raising his profile.Who was Toni Zuccheri? Born in 1936 in San Vito al Tagliamento in Italy\u2019s Friuli region, a son of an estate owner and painter who was a member of de Chirico\u2019s circle, Zuccheri studied architecture at the University of Venice under the tutelage of Scarpa, Franco Albini, and Bruno Zevi, among others. He began working at Venini in the early 1960s, where he produced the beginnings of his bestiary: a hoopoe, a turkey, a guinea fowl, and a duck, which were exhibited at the 1964 Biennale&amp;nbsp;in Venice. In 1965 he met the architect Gio Ponti, and the two collaborated on stained glass windows. Over the course&amp;nbsp;of 40 years, in addition to unique items, Zuccheri executed small production series, including lighting, for Venini and other companies. A visitor to his studio in 1990 described him as an \u201Calchemist,\u201D working in \u201Cnoble, silent, peevish solitude...submerged by the rising flood of trash, debris, garbage produced by life and work.\u201D Zuccheri died in 2008.Rare BirdsThe birds\u2014technically almost unbelievable\u2014are Zuccheri\u2019s calling card to history. \u201CRadical, eccentric, really over-the-top\u201D is how they are described by Jim Oliveira, a dealer who vetted, curated, and catalogued the Toskan sale with Sara Blumberg, his partner at New York\u2019s Glass Past. \u201CHe broke away from the existing vocabulary of forms at Venini: the simple symmetries, the elegant balance.\u201D The Toskan sale featured a turkey, circa 1964 (est. $15\u201320,000), that was bought in, but available post sale for $17,500. A phoenix will go up on the block at Phillips on October 16 in a sale curated by design impresario Murray Moss.The Production SeriesZuccheri\u2019s vases, bowls, and lighting, executed largely for Venini, are organic, naturalistic, and sculptural. They are frequently freely shaped\u2014unlike classic, rounded blown vessels\u2014or they do things glass shouldn\u2019t do: They tear, split, intertwine. Their names are evocative of their forms or techniques: The first series for Venini included the Grovigli (\u201Ctangles\u201D), Tronchi (\u201Ctorsos\u201D), and Scolpiti (\u201Csculpteds\u201D). The Giade (\u201Cjades\u201D) and Ninfee (\u201Cwater lilies\u201D) forms were also designed through the 1960s. In the 1970s, Zuccheri designed Membrane, a series in which a glass skin on the vessel\u2019s interior holds the color while the exterior walls remain clear. Zuccheri also worked for other companies like VeArt, which produced the Otri (\u201Cwineskins\u201D) and Vulcani series. In the 1980s his designs for Barovier &amp;amp; Toso included the Spacchi (\u201Csplits\u201D)IdentificationZuccheri is not flea market fodder. Knowledgeable dealers, like Blumberg and Oliveira of Glass Past or the Rita Fancsaly gallery, in Milan, are aware of the marking, relative rarity, and nuances of variety among production pieces. Zuccheri\u2019s Venini work is generally identified with just the etched words \u201CVenini Italia.\u201D The birds are occasionally signed with \u201CTZ Venini\u201D in a circular bronze label. (The standard literature on the firm is Franco Deboni\u2019s 2007 Venini Glass). According to the artist\u2019s son Taddeo, Zuccheri\u2019s work outside Venini is usually signed \u201CTZ,\u201D \u201Ctz,\u201D or \u201Ct.z.\u201D But all is not known. Recently rediscovered Venini papers thought to have been lost in a major fire in the 1970s, are rewriting history.This article originally appeared in the September issue of Art+Auction.[content:advertisement-center]"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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