PAPAIA vase, Laura Díaz de Santillana (Arcade -Italy-, 2001)

This is pure 21st Century art glass (which is a rarity in our collections). It was designed by Laura Díaz de Santillana for the relatively young ARCADE glassworks in Murano -from which I haven't been able to find any information except for the images in their website-.

This vase belongs to a series of tropical fruit inspired vases with the same matte (handgraved) finishing:
PAPAIA, made in three different shades of green and three sizes (18, 22 and 43 cm. tall). Ours is the smallest size.
MANGO, made in dark red glass and standing 27 cm. tall.
PASSION, made in an orange-ish red glass and standing 28 cm. tall.
MARACUIA, made in golden yellow glass and in two sizes: 43 and 30 cm. tall
COCCO, made in brown glass and standing 17 cm. tall.

As you can see on pic 4, the vases were handmade in Murano by the glassblower master Simone Cenedese. They were made in a limited series of 300 vases and they are all fully signed on the base pic 3).

Laura Díaz de Santillana (1955) is the granddaugther of the great Paolo Venini, founder of the Venini glassworks. She attended the School of Visual Arts in New York and worked as a graphic designer in the 1970s n new york and when she returned to Italy she began working with Vetreria Venini. Since then she's worked mostly with glass.

A couple of years before she designed these fruit vases, she designed the BAMBU range for Arcade -a series of tall vases in many different colours and a simmilar matte finishing.