Oscar Zanetti
OSCAR ZANETTI — Oscar Zanetti was born in 1961 into one of the historic families of Murano. His family was one of the first to move to Murano from Venice, when at the end of the thirteenth century, it was decided to relocate all the furnaces to this island for safety reasons. The coat-of-arms of the Zanetti family – representing a fox and a snake – may be seen in the frieze on the Glass Museum, an institution that owes its foundation in 1861 to a member of the Zanetti family. The abbot, Vincenzo Zanetti, devoted his efforts to sustain and promote the art of glass and founded the School of Glass in 1862.
Both Oscar Zanetti’s father and grandfather were Glassmasters. Oscar’s grandfather, after whom he was named, was a Glassmaster for Venini and opened his own furnace, in 1956, on the Fondamenta Vetrai. with his son Licio, Oscar’s father. Licio had worked for Venini, Cenedese and Alfredo Barbini, and soon became an artist renowned for his creations and for his collaboration with famous artists such as Raul Goldoni, Enzo Scarpa, Fulvio Bianconi and Libero Vitali.
Though the furnace represented a future anticipated by many young men on Murano throughout the past century, Oscar was not attracted to it immediately; at the age of twelve he took a job in a metal-working shop. His subsequent introduction to glass was gradual: it began with lamp-work, with which he created objects, figures and animals, and continued with his experience in an actual “piazza” at Barovier & Toso. In that glasshouse, whose specialty was in the production of chandeliers, Oscar’s passion developed quickly and his predilection for the profession soon became evident.
He began at the entry level of ‘garzone’, but was simultaneously offered the opportunity to act as ‘servente’ and within two years he had acquired a remarkable level of expertise. It was then, in the early Eighties, that his father Licio summoned him to work with him, and this represented a new beginning. It meant a change from blown glass to solid glass – which is still the distinctive characteristic of the production by Vetreria Zanetti – where the glass to be gathered weighed ten times more, where a different technique was required and, what’s more, there was a relationship to be built with his father.
Oscar Zanetti bio continued ...
