Works by Venetian maestro Lino Tagliapietra to sell in May at Rago Auctions in Lambertville

Rago Auctions in Lambertville on May 19 will offer for sale a grouping of works by Venetian master glassblower Lino Tagliapietra. 

The lots will be offered as part of Rago’s Modern Ceramics + Glass Auction, which caps off their Early 20th C. and Modern Design Auctions being held May 18-19.

Lino Tagliapietra was born in Murano, Italy, a series of islands widely considered the epicenter of Italian glassmaking. He became a glassmaker’s apprentice at the age of 12, and spent the following decades developing his craft and creating a design aesthetic that balances an adherence to traditional methods with the creation of exaggerated and kinetic forms of a distinctly modern flavor.

Over the course of his career, Tagliapietra has collaborated with such notable fellow glassmakers as Dan Dailey and Dale Chihuly, and was responsible for teaching glass blowing and cold carving methods to several generations of American artists and students.

His work can be found in the collections of the De Young Museum in San Francisco, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and many other institutions in the U.S. and around the world.

Rago has brought more than 100 works by Tagliapietra to auction since 2006, with prices realized ranging from several hundred dollars to over $100,000 for a single lot. The Lambertville auction house holds the current auction record for a work by Lino Tagliapietra, having sold a twelve-piece work titled “Masai” for $118,750 in May 2018.

Highlights from the Lino Tagliapietra grouping the May 19 auction include lot 1898, a large, complicated and well-designed “Mandara” vessel, expertly executed in incalmo technique and finished with an intricate patterns of cold work; lot 1899, a large “Fuji” vessel that employs a complex pattern of murrine in a basket weave to create an impression of bubbles floating up to the surface; and lot 1904, an exceptionally rare, tall, and brightly colored “angel tear” vessel.

Rago  is a leading U.S. auction house with nearly $34 million in sales in 2018.