American artist Thomas Stearns (1936-2006) collaborated with the legendary Venini glassworks as a guest designer between 1960 and 1962. Stearns was the first American to design for Venini; he won a Fulbright Travel Grant, left Cranbrook Academy and showed up in Murano with plenty of new ideas for elegant, irregular blown-glass pieces (but absolutely no knowledge of the Italian language). Stearns' groundbreaking designs, characterized by asymmetrical forms and bold blocks of color, won the "Best of Show" award at the 1962 Venice Biennial, but proved too difficult to put into mass production--inadvertently preserving them as precious, limited-edition art objects.

The latest in Skira's series of monographs on 20th-century glass, Thomas Stearns at Venini tells the fascinating story of Stearns' collaboration with the venerable Italian glassworks. An essential volume for collectors, scholars and dealers, the publication catalogs all of Stearns' production at Venini.