“I am Lino” is a new documentary movie featuring the life and legacy of Lino Tagliapietra, the revered Murano glass maestro. The moving tribute was a hit at the Seattle International Film Festival in May and the WMODA team was thrilled to watch the movie streaming. Every day we are reminded of Lino’s brilliance as one of his exuberant Venetian vases is featured at the entrance to the museum.

In this emotional documentary, Lino contemplates his retirement and reflects on his life as a glassblower with the help of his family, friends and protégés. He has spent 76 years working with glass, having started his career carrying water in the Murano factories as a boy of 11. He was apprenticed to the Venetian maestro Archimede Seguso and became a maestro himself at the age of 25.

Lino first met Dale Chihuly during the young American student’s Fulbright Fellowship at the Venini factory in 1968. Ten years later, Lino was invited to demonstrate his skills at the Pilchuck Glass School, founded by Chihuly in the Pacific Northwest. Lino’s first language was glass and despite having no English, he returned frequently to teach at the summer school. He can be seen creating one of his iconic Saturno vessels, like the one at WMODA, in the Fragile Art documentary series filmed at Pilchuck.

The exchange of knowledge between the Italian maestro and American glass students proved invaluable for the Studio Glass Movement. Coming to the States changed Lino’s life and gave him the confidence to become an independent glass artist in 1989. He collaborated with Chihuly at his Seattle studio creating the wildly flamboyant Venetian series with its abundance of twisting coils and swirling ribbons. Lino breathed new life into glass as an art form and Chihuly acclaims him as “the greatest glassblower in the world,“ an opinion shared by his talented team in the tribute movie.

Many of Lino’s long-term assistants became recognized glass artists, including Dante Marioni, John Kiley and Nancy Callan. The team traveled with Lino as their mentor and father figure for many years, giving hot shop demonstrations, learning new techniques, cooking together and sharing friendships. Lino’s ability to connect with people and inspire curiosity is as impressive as his incredible manipulation of glass. Lino became great friends with the late Stephen Rolfe Powell, another acclaimed glass artist and educator featured at WMODA. Powell first lured Lino to teach at Centre College in Danville, KY with the promise of a trip to the Kentucky Derby. Lino later received an honorary doctorate from the college and the keys to the City of Danville. You can watch Lino’s 2000 Centre College demonstration in the Maestro of Glass video on YouTube.

Over the years, Lino has received countless honors and lifetime achievement awards for his dedication to glass, and his work is represented in prestigious museums and galleries internationally. We are delighted to have some of his work at WMODA and I was honored to meet him at the 2016 SOFA show in Chicago. In his eighties, Lino presented farewell demonstrations at Corning Museum of Glass and the Tacoma Museum of Glass, highlights of which can be seen in the Sono Lino documentary.

For Lino, the only way to express himself was to blow glass. It is hard to believe that he has finally retired. As he approaches his 90th birthday in August, he still finds it hard to separate glass from life. He always maintained that his favorite piece is the next one so, as he says in the film “You never know!”