Dante Marioni
American glass maestro Dante Marioni's instantly recognizable work reveals the strong influence of classical Greek and Italian vessels, offset by his own sense of scale, modern design sense and bold color palette.
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Despite his Italian sounding name and his almost exclusive use of Venetian glass techniques, Dante Marioni is American through and through. He was born in California in 1964 and spent his early years in the San Francisco Bay area, dreaming of becoming a baseball player or a motorcycle racer. He was born into an artistic family and was always close to the glass scene since his father Paul Marioni was one of the pioneers of the American "dip and drip" school of hot glass. However Paul's aesthetic was something that Dante did not feel comfortable with. He felt more in tune with his uncle Joseph Marioni, a painter known for his monochrome color field paintings. In 1979, when Dante was a teenager, his family moved to Seattle, which was then as it is now, the epicenter of glass creation in the United States. In the same year, Dante met Benjamin Moore who had been to Venice and blew perfect forms in the Venetian manner. The following year, Lino Tagliapietra came to Pilchuck; and when Dante saw his way of making glass, centered, elegant, faultless and beautiful, there was no turning back. That was the way Dante Marioni wanted to work.
In the years that followed, Dante Marioni became an outstanding maestro. He has taken inspiration from classical sources ranging from the sculptural elegance of black and red ancient Greek ceramics to the harmony and balance of Venetian goblets. One Venetian artist in particular, Napoleone Martinuzzi, active in Venice in the 1930s, has been a significant influence. Years and years of patient practice and endless repetition have made the choreography of complex glass blowing second nature to him. These skills, in addition to his eye for form and color help make him the outstanding artist that he is. With his usual modesty he says, "I am more interested in perfecting something than in inventing it."
What sets Marioni's work apart from the work of his contemporaries is scale and color. There is a tall, architectural feel to the vessel forms he creates, often grouped into duos or three part "still lives", reminiscent of the way in which Renaissance painters liked to group glass in their paintings. Marioni started out with a series of oversize vases which he called "whoppers". He has gone on to Etruscan vase forms, leaf vases, mosaic vases, and glass where he makes perfect use of the Venetian "reticello" technique. For himself, he likes to make goblets, the best blowing exercise and the most perfect Italian form invented in Venice in the sixteenth century. His unerring color palette can set your teeth on edge. He likes bold colors, such as chartreuse and yellow, and also strong primary colors such as red and blue.
Marioni's work has been exhibited extensively in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia and is featured in many prominent public collections, including Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York; the Japanese National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, Japan; National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia; National Museum of Stockholm in Stockholm, Sweden; Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery in Washington D.C.; Victoria & Albert Museum in London, England and The White House Crafts Collection in Washington, D.C. Marioni's awards and accolades include 1st Place for Reticello from the Glasmuseet Ebeltoft in Demark in 2002, the 1997 Urban Glass Award for Outstanding Achievement in Glass, and the 1987 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award.
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