Fazzoletto

Conceived in 1948 by Fulvio Bianconi, the Fazzoletto — Italian for handkerchief — captures something that should be impossible in glass: the soft, weightless drape of fabric caught mid-float. Each piece is hand-blown on the island of Murano, spun on the end of the glassblower's rod while the glass is still molten — it is this spinning that coaxes the material into its signature folded drape, the centrifugal force doing what gravity does to fabric. The result is then hand-finished by Venini's master glassblowers, its wafting silhouette shaped entirely by breath, rather than any mould. No two are identical. A post-war icon that has never gone out of style, and never will.