Fabric Floor Lamps by Massimo and Lella Vignelli for Venini, 1980s, Set of 2

For over 50 years, Italian-born husband-and-wife team Massimo and Lella Vignelli collaborated on a variety of now iconic design projects spanning the product, print, interior, exhibition, and industrial arenas.

Massimo Vignelli was born in Milan in 1931. He studied architecture at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan from 1948 to 1950, before going on to study at both the Politecnico in Milan (1950–53) and the University of Venice (1953–57). While still a student, he designed lighting for renowned Murano glassmaker Venini.

Lella Vignelli (née Valle) was born in Udine, Italy in 1934. She studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge from 1955 to 1958, and, before returning to Italy, worked as a junior designer for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. In 1962, she graduated with a degree in architecture from the University of Venice.

Having married in 1957, the pair established the Lella and Massimo Vignelli Office of Design and Architecture in Milan in 1960, focusing on office accessories, home products, graphics, and furniture. The studio’s clients included Pirelli and Olivetti, among others. In 1965, the Vignellis moved to Chicago and founded, along with six other designers, Unimark International (1965–71), which specialized in corporate graphics. Clients included the likes of American Airlines, Knoll, Bloomingdales, Ford, and Saks Fifth Avenue. Notably, Massimo’s prolific print work championed the Helvetica typeface, encouraging its eventual widespread popularity in the US. In 1971, the couple established Vignelli Associates (known from 1978 on as Vignelli Designs) in New York. They continued to work together until Massimo’s passing in May of 2014.

The Vignellis can be credited with helping to bring contemporary Italian design to the US. Their shared aesthetic celebrates balance, elegance, and simplicity, and embraces the notion that a designer should be able to design anything and everything. Notable projects include, among others, the stackable Knoll Handkerchief Chair (1982–87); colorful, molded melamine Heller Stacking Dishes (1964); and the 1972 New York City subway map. In addition to their design work, both have taught, lectured, written, and served on a variety of juries and boards throughout their careers. Their work has been exhibited internationally in a variety of exhibitions, including, in 1980, a retrospective at New York’s Parsons School of Design. In 1982, the Vignellis were awarded the AIGA Gold Medal. In 2008, the couple donated their complete design archive to the Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York; the archive is now housed in a 2010-erected building of their own design, the Vignelli Center for Design Studies.

Venini—the world famous Italian glass company—traces it roots to 1921, when Paolo Venini (1895-1959), a Milan lawyer with glassmaking ancestors, and Giacomo Cappellin (1887-1968), a Venetian antiques dealer, launched the Cappellin Venini & C. glass factory on the island of Murano. Under the art direction of Vittorio Zecchin, Cappellin and Venini’s business produced high quality, Renaissance-style goblets, pitchers, and vases.

In 1925, following a dispute with Zecchin, Cappellin and Venini split their business in two. Venini’s business took the name Vetri Soffiati Muranesi Venini & C., along with a new, visionary art director, Napoleone Martinuzzi. Venini soon became synonymous with flamboyantly hued art glass and glass lighting at the cutting edge of contemporary aesthetics.

From 1927 to 1932, Venini explored a series of new, techniques—like pasta vitrea (opaque glass), vetro incamiciato (layered glass), and vetro pulegoso (bubble glass)—which engendered particularly experimental forms for the time. Venini’s reputation for innovation grew through exhibitions at national fairs, like the Venice Biennale, Monza, and eventually the Triennale di Milano. Around this time, Venini went into to partnership with Gio Ponti, Pietro Chiesa, Emilio Lancia, Michele Marelli, Tomaso Buzzi, and Carlo Visconti di Modrone to form Il Labirinto, an association for the promotion of modern design.

In 1932, Martinuzzi decided to dedicate himself to sculpture, and Venini’s artistic directorship went to architects Tomaso Buzzi and Carlo Scarpa. The modernist vision they brought to Venini represented an exciting, modernist turn for the company. Scarpa was particularly interested in capturing and amplifying light’s interaction with glass and was instrumental in developing new techniques like battuto (beaten glass), tessuto (glass with lines), granulare (glass with small globules), and murina (patterned glass made from rods).

Following World War II, Venini continued to produce glass in a modern idiom, frequently in collaboration with important midcentury designers and architects—not only Carlo Scarpa and Gio Ponti, but also BBPR,Fulvio Bianconi, Roberto Menghi, Tobia Scarpa, Massimo Vignelli, and Tapio Wirkkala.

When Paolo Venini passed away in 1959, his company passed to his son-in-law, Ludovico Diaz De Santillan. In the 1970s, Ludovico’s daughter, Laura, managed the company, until the Gardini and Ferruzzi families acquired it in the mid-1980s. Through the end of the 20th century, Venini continued to work with outstanding design talents, including Gae Aulenti,Mario Bellini, Alessandro Mendini, Timo Sarpaneva, and Ettore Sottsass.

In 2001, Venini was acquired by Italian Luxury Industries. In the 21^st century, the company has commissioned designs from the likes of Tadao Ando, Atelier Biagetti, Atelier Oï, Barber Osgerby, the Bouroullec brothers, the Campana brothers, Gaetano Pesce, Matteo Thun, and Studio Job. In 2011, Venini celebrated its 90^th anniversary with a travelling exhibition that visited the Glass Museum of Murano, Palazzo Grassi and Punta della Dogana in Venice, the Shanghai Museum of Glass, and the Bagatti Valsecchi Museum in Milan. The first exhibition dedicated to the glass produced by Carlo Scarpa for Venini was a critical and popular success in 2013-14 when it showed at Le Stanze del Vetro in Venice and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Venini glass can be found in the permanent collections of the Louvre, V&A, MoMA, and more.

* Images courtesy of Venini