1. Ettore Sottsass: The Glass. Le Stanze del Vetro, Venice, Italy. April 10 - July 30, 2017.

2. Un architecte dans l'atelier, Ettore Sottsass. Cité de la céramique, Sèvres, France, February 20 - July 22, 2013.

Glass represents a distinctive chapter in the career of the seminal Italian architect and designer Ettore Sottsass (1917-2007), embodying the unique approach to materials and life that defines his oeuvre. “From the soft comes the fragile, from the fire comes the color, from the glow comes the transparency. What do I know, it's all very strange,” said Sottsass.

Sottsass began his exploration dedicated to the possibilities of glass in 1974 spurred by a request of Luciano Vistosi. His investigations continued in Murano and at CIRVA (International Centre for Research on Glass and the Arts) in Marseille until the final years of his life. For over three decades, he challenged the conventions of glassmaking, transforming both its methods and mindset. In doing so, he expanded the medium, creating a singular body of work that stands as a milestone within his own career as well as in the broader history of glass.

Xiangzheng comes from a rarely seen series executed at CIRVA in 1999 referencing Chinese calligraphy. Xiangzheng, translating to "symbol" in English, is a result of Sottsass' life-long immersion in East and South Asian cultures through travel and personal exchanges, starting in the 1960s. Sottsass wrote: "The signs I have designed concern, precisely, only that intense, fairly definitive emotion which I felt and have tried to explain." Xiangzheng was last exhibited at the 2017 retrospective exhibition Sottsass: Glass, at the Fondazione Cini during the 57th Venice Biennal.