Blossoming Beauty

Glass craftsmanship in bloom

Explore an enchanting display of floral creativity and fine glass craftsmanship

Enter an evocative fairy tale garden where beautiful flower bouquets are displayed to glorious effect in bespoke glass vases, enhanced by an immersive video and poetic soundtrack. To create this enchanting exhibition, leading glass manufacturer Venini, based on Murano island in Venice, collaborated with ten international flower designers to create a series of original vases using ancient glassmaking techniques. Those same floral artists then created special bouquets to enhance the beauty of these delicate glass vessels. The result is a stunning display demonstrating the fine craftsmanship involved in both glassmaking and floral art.

Designer Sylvain Roca has created an experience for all the senses. As well as the stunning glass vases and floral bouquets, a mysterious soundtrack conceived by French composer Christian Holl celebrates the relationship between artisans and the natural world: the transformation of grains of sand into splendid glass forms in the furnaces of Venini, and the creation of beautiful bouquets by artists using nature’s bounty. A video directed by filmmaker Olivier Brunet celebrates the four elements of the natural world, while the garden’s entrance features an exquisitely crafted sign by graphic artists Antoine+Manuel.

Curated by

Michelangelo Foundation
The Michelangelo Foundation for Creativity and Craftsmanship is an international, non-profit institution based in Geneva, Switzerland, which celebrates and preserves master craftsmanship and strengthens its connection to the world of design. Rooted in a tradition of culture and excellence and in the realities and challenges of today’s global economy, the foundation seeks to support men and women who dedicate themselves to the pursuit of master craftsmanship and to foster a new cultural movement built around the values that are essential for their work.
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Sylvain Roca
Since more than twenty years, he has designed the scenography for temporary and permanent exhibitions all over France and around the world, including at the Musée d’Orsay and the Grand Palais in Paris, the British Museum in London, the Heritage Museum in Hong Kong, the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, the Bouregreg Culture in Rabat, the World Exhibition in Shanghai… He creates events and scenography for communication agencies and has developed product design studies for leading brands.
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Venini
Founded in 1921 by Paolo Venini, a Milanese lawyer, and Giacomo Cappellin, a Venetian antiques dealer, Venini SpA, then Cappellin, Venini & C., would become a model of excellence in the world of artistic glass, laying the foundations for a stylistic identity that still distinguishes it today. Venini has always created objects with a timeless design that are destined to appreciate in value. Thanks to the excellence of quality, the high artistic content, and the manufacturing value intrinsic to each piece, the hammer prices of Venini glassware reach record figures at major auctions. Since 2016, the Damiani family (owners of the homonymous international luxury jewellery brand), have held the controlling interest in Venini S.p.A., and their aim is to promote one of Italy's most authentically excellent brands.
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Glass craftsmanship in bloom

A world of floral art in their hands

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