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Venice and the beauty of the reeds of its lagoon have given me strong emotions with always different images, from day to day, from season to season. Hence the inspiration for the Canneto collection, works in blown glass.
Michela Cattai

Acquamarina

It is, in other words, the quintessence of venezianità (‘Venetianness’), a study of the past in order to anticipate the future.
Elisabetta Longari.

Installation view, The Venice Glass Week 2017, personal exhibition at Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, Venice.

In 2017 one of these pieces has been acquired by the Stiftung Museum KunstPalast, in Düsseldorf, Germany and it is part of its Permanent Collection ever since.

Exhibition view of Acquamarina at Sala del Cenacolo, Chamber of Deputies, in Rome, 2017.

The artist avails herself of age-old techniques. These include the practice, of Renaissance origin, of working with filigree, the use of iridescence, ribbon abrasion, battuto (wheel-engraved, multi-faceted surface) and engraving.

Minimal but sensual shapes, slightly twisted, which present their skin, with a transparent colour, taut like that of a drum.

In 2018 this unique piece became part of the Permanent Collection of Murano Glass Museum of Venice, Italy.

Acquavariegata

Cattai has “dirtied” the glassy fabric with a layer of dark glass, which, similar to brush strokes, confers a paint-like texture of a decidedly contemporary style to the walls of the vases.

Cattai’s driving force lies in the emotional sediments rooted in her own memories of the water and the “laguna” environment, which lead to a contemporary reinterpretation of centuries-old techniques’ visual and tactile effects.

Exhibition curated by Elisabetta Longari, Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista di Venezia, first edition of international festival The Venice Glass Weeek, 2017.

The series has been exhibited at the Chamber of Deputy in Rome and at The Venice Glass Week, in Venice. Acquavariegata has been featured on Eco Dai Palazzi, James Magazine and AD.

Fasce

Exhibition view of Fasce at Sala del Cenacolo, Chamber of Deputies, in Rome, 2017.

The series Canneto is a highly suggestive collection, and it represents Michela Cattai’s debut in glasswork: not an absolute debut, but, rather, a return, a new spark of a young love.

Two unique pieces from Fasce series, took part in the Vitrea collective exhibition at Triennale di Milano, in May 2022

These vases are water and lagoon and reeds and reflections and sky, contain the energy of all the elements, not even the fire is missing as it is inherent in the very process of transformation of the powder into glass.

The series has been exhibited at the Chamber of Deputy in Rome and at The Venice Glass Week, in Venice. Fasce has been featured on Eco Dai Palazzi, James Magazine, AD and Living Corriere.

Screziati

The blown-glass cane grass pieces, are inspired by the cane fields of the “barene” (lands that are periodically flooded by the tides) and were purposely conceived with an irregular upward thrust (unlike their natural counterpart, which has a perfectly linear shape), often beaten by winds and covered in mud, a constant presence in this habitat.

The triangular shape of these blown-glass objects is the result of the need to obtain a flat surface in order to create areas of colour, using glass canes as if they were brushstrokes and giving depth to the painting visible through the sculptural forms of the glass.

Stripped of all the usual decorative elements, the form reveals its basic structure in the twisting of the volumes with their tactile surfaces, while the use of models and moulds, and decorative or over-refined finishes is avoided.

The series has been exhibited at the Chamber of Deputy in Rome, at The Venice Glass Week, in Venice and at Galleria Civica di Bolzano, Bozen. Screziati has been featured on Artribune, Murano.net, Eco Dai Palazzi, James Magazine and AD.

Venice and the beauty of the reeds of its lagoon have given me strong emotions with always different images, from day to day, from season to season. Hence the inspiration for the Canneto collection, works in blown glass.
Michela Cattai

Laguna

Installation view, The Venice Glass Week 2017, personal exhibition at Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, Venice.

he Venice lagoon and the beauty of its reeds have aroused strong emotions within me. From such images, varying constantly from day to day and season to season the inspiration for the Canneto Collection of works in blown glass arose.

The series, has a highly concentrated Venetian feel, not only for the suggestive resemblance to the Laguna, from which the project got started, but also for the technical choices that characterize it.

The monochromatic vases, in their essential nature, exalt their vitreous makeup in the tonalities that recall the colours of the brackish waters of the Laguna at different times of the day and in different seasons.

The Permanent Collection of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista in Venice exhibits glasswork from the Laguna series in its monumental museum.

The Permanent Collection of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista in Venice exhibits a glass work from the Laguna series in its monumental museum.

The series has been exhibited at Chamber of Deputy, Rome, The Venice Glass Week, Miami/Design Basel, Expo Chicago, FOG Design+Art, Galleria Civica di Bolzano (Bozen), NOMAD St.Moritz, Milano Design Week, Sofa Chicago, Italian Institute of Culture in Tokyo. Laguna has been featured on Arte.it, Artribune, Eco Dai Palazzi, James Magazine and AD.