A graphic artist, illustrator and designer, Fulvio Bianconi (Padua, 1915 – Milan, 1996), from the interwar period onwards, was associated with the glassworks of Paolo Venini with which he established a significant working relationship, one continuing for much of the 1950s and leading to the creation of an extraordinary series of highly coloured Murano glass pieces that encapsulate the enthusiasm of the decade and characterise the taste of the period. In the ’60s and ’80s–’90s, the artist renewed his association with the glassworks, if in an episodic way, designing several other little series. The present volume, the fruit of thoroughgoing research based mostly on unpublished material coming from the Venini historical archives, revisits this exciting experience of Bianconi’s and illustrates the entire production created for the celebrated Murano furnace. This consists of some five hundred models, including vases and bowls with original forms and exuberant but refined polychrome glass weaves (pezzati, scozzesi, a fasce) (patchwork, Scots, with bands etc.). As well as these, there are amusing animals but also a great number (c. 180) of very lively and ironic glass figurines, often freely inspired by characters of the Commedia dell’arte (Italian popular theatre), such as Arlecchino (Harlequin) and Pulcinella, and others by regional or period costumes etc., testimony to the extraordinary creativity of a versatile and prolific artist.