You haven’t seen anything like this Mid Century Italian blown glass Sommerso bowl w/ assorted fruit!! In the art glass world the size of this bowl is monumental and the fabulous clear blue makes such a statement. It is filled with very cool Italian glass fruit which could actually stand on its own wonderfully on a shelf. The fruit, blown with gold leaf flecks, consists of an orange, a lemon, two bananas, and a bunch of three cherries. The lemon seems to have lost its leaf but only noticable on close examination. I assume this was originally a console bowl and fruit set. Definitely circa Mid Century. This is a piece for your collection not to pass. This size and in this condition does not surface too often.
In case you are not familiar with the term Sommerso, as I was not, here is a description from Wikipedia: Sommerso (lit. “submerged” in Italian), or “sunken glasses“, is a form of artistic Murano glass that has layers of contrasting colors (typically two), which are formed by dipping a gather of colored glass into another molten glass and then blowing the gather into the desired shape; the outermost layer, or casing, is often clear. Sommerso was developed in Murano during the late thirties and was made popular by Seguso d’Arte in the fifties. This process is a popular technique for vases, and is sometimes used for sculptures.
