Laura de Santillana was born in Venice, Italy, in 1955 into the Venini glassmaking family. Her grandfather, Paolo Venini, founded the celebrated Murano glass company, while her father, Ludovico Diaz de Santillana, later served as its artistic director. After studying classics and architecture, she moved to New York in 1975, attended the School of Visual Arts, and worked at Vignelli Associates. This experience strengthened her understanding of graphic clarity, proportion, and abstraction before she returned to Italy and began creating objects, lighting, and glassware for Venini.
After leaving Venini, de Santillana co-founded EOS Design nel Vetro in 1985 and later dedicated herself fully to sculpture. Her most recognizable works developed from an accidental experiment in which a blown glass form was compressed into a flattened volume. These luminous pieces, often described as books, established a compelling tension between interior space and physical surface. She worked with Murano masters, American glassmakers, and industrial workshops in the Czech Republic, continually investigating color, light, gravity, and the limits of the material. Her work was exhibited internationally and is represented in prominent museum and private collections. She died in 2019, leaving an influential legacy in contemporary glass.
