Tacoma Glass Museum Vittorio Costantini Exhibit
Now through June 15, 2025
By Greta Schneider
Mitzi Kugler and I were at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington a couple of months ago and got to see some gorgeous work in the current gallery exhibition. There is a wonderful combination of the museum (with both permanent and traveling exhibitions), a hot shop – so you can actually watch hot glass being made, a terrific store and much more. Whether you CREATE glass art or just love looking at it, you will enjoy the Tacoma Museum of Glass. More info and details are available online.
One artist whose work Mitzi and I were particularly interested in seeing is Vittorio Costantini. He was born near Murano, Italy in 1944 and started doing glass at the age of 11! He does absolutely incredible torch work creating insects, butterflies, fish, shells, birds, flowers and more. Those tiny bees and the other insects are life size and they literally look real!
If you look back at the much larger insect pieces done by Sean Goddard, a member of our guild who was one of the featured artists in our last issue, it is fascinating to look at the incredible realism and beautiful workmanship creating glass insects, but using two entirely different techniques and very different sizes! It shows what an amazing variety of artistic work that can be created in glass using very similar subjects!
Vittorio’s work will be on display through June 15, 2025 along with beautiful artwork by several other highly talented artists. More info and details are available online. There is a small booklet of postcards of Vittorio’s bugs for sale in the store too (see photo). I’ve attached some photos for a taste of the quality of his amazing work, but there are many more to see in the museum. Those of you who have tried torch work will understand how incredible these are. The wings especially amazed me.
The Tacoma Museum of Glass has several other exhibits too:
• Internationally acclaimed glass artist Dale Chihuly was born in Tacoma and helped put a spotlight on glass art in the Northwest and has been quite involved with the museum over the years. The museum has a number of his pieces in a permanent collection plus a beautiful 500 ft. long Chihuly Bridge of Glass, a pedestrian overpass that links the museum to downtown Tacoma!
• If you get to go to the museum don’t miss the “Kid’s Design Glass” in one of the hallways. Those pieces will make you smile! Anyway, this is a wonderful resource that is close enough for most of us to visit…and well worth it.