Dan Dailey speaks about his time at Venini on a Fulbright scholarship. Oral history interview with Dan Dailey by Barb Elam, April 26, 2018, Bard Graduate Center. 02:18.

Dan Dailey: Well Venini—for me, it was a real eye opener. I had a Fulbright, I was going to stay in Italy for a year, and I just settled down in Venice got some kind of a studio together in this pretty large apartment that I rented—at least three rooms dedicated to drawing and model making and putting together things that I’ve made parts for in the factory cause I made a lot of lamps. And then—I went to the factory every day, on weekdays. And so I got to know a lot of people. They were very helpful. They would give me a bench—let me use any color. And then sometimes the—Ludvico Santiano who was the director, would allow me to have some blowers make parts for me for something I was thinking, then I would share my drawings with them. Everybody was extremely encouraging and helpful and inquisitive. People, like, I remember one time when I was working on something combining some colors, and the guy who—you’d see sweeping the floors and loading the annealers came over to me and said Dan—they called me Dieci because they thought Dan was ‘ten’—number ten. Dieci is ten in Italian. So they thought I was the tenth kid. They called me Dieci—some of them did. So anyway, he came over and said to me, ‘Dieci, you’re using the wrong green.’ And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘That green is not soft enough. You gotta use this green.’ He showed me—went over and showed me something and I said, ‘Okay, I’ll try.’ And he was right. So to have the factory guy be critiquing my palette was an astonishing thing. Their engagement with the—it’s not just a job. There’s something about—they live it. They’re into it—in the details and they feel things in a very sensual way. The reason somebody’s a maestro is because they have a very—the touch is just right, they’ve got control—they can be strong when they have to and then let back when they need to and all the balance is there. And it’s a subtle thing to practice and practice, and it’s just totally different there. So that was what I gained from that experience.