Delivery: 7 to 10 business days
Pair of Murano glass wall sconces, 7 smoked triedri prisms per sconce, column design, chrome frame. Mount vertically or horizontally. Late 20th-century Italian style.
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Glass: Hand-crafted Murano glass, triedri triangular prism rods, smoked finish; 7 prisms per sconce
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Frame: Chrome metal
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Set: Sold as a pair
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Sconce dimensions: Height 25¼ in (64 cm) · Width 8⅛ in (21 cm) · Depth from wall 4¼ in (11 cm)
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Bulb fitting: 1 × E14 per sconce (not included)
There are sconces that decorate a wall. And then there are sconces that restructure it — that introduce a line, a rhythm, a vertical logic that the room did not have before.
This pair of smoked triedri Murano glass column sconces does the latter.
Seven triangular prisms per fixture, stacked in a chrome frame, rising to just over 25 inches: a composition that is simultaneously simple and precise, quiet at a distance and complex up close.
The craft
The triedri — from the Italian for three-faced — is one of the most technically demanding forms in the Murano glassmaker's vocabulary. Each prism is a solid triangular rod, hand-crafted in a Murano fornace by Venetian maestri vetrai, with three flat faces that meet at edges sharp enough to catch and split light into distinct directional reflections. Where the poliedri sphere scatters light in all directions and the corteccia tube diffuses it through texture, the triedri prism directs it: each face reflects at a specific angle, and as the viewer moves, the prism appears to change — now catching the light fully, now receding into shadow, now flashing a single bright edge. In smoked glass, this directional quality acquires depth. The tint absorbs a portion of the ambient light rather than transmitting it fully, which means the reflections from the flat faces read against a darker ground — more dramatic, more sculptural, more present than the same form in clear crystal. Seven prisms per sconce, stacked in column configuration, multiply this effect vertically across the full height of the fixture.
The material and structure
The chrome metal frame is the right choice for this glass. Its cool, mirror-reflective finish mirrors the precision of the triedri geometry without competing with the warmth of the smoked tone — a material pairing that feels considered rather than default. The frame is slim and unobtrusive, structured to hold the seven prisms in their column alignment without the frame itself becoming the dominant visual element. The result is a fixture where the glass does the work, and the metal holds it in place with quiet authority. The dual-orientation design — vertical or horizontal — is not an afterthought: the fixture is engineered to read as intentional in both positions, which doubles its usefulness across different spatial contexts and installation requirements.
Style and spaces
The column triedri sconce belongs to a specific moment in Italian decorative lighting — the late twentieth century, when Murano glassmakers were pushing geometric form into territory that was simultaneously rooted in Venetian craft and fully engaged with the language of contemporary design. In a contemporary interior, this pair introduces material richness and handcraft precision into a space that might otherwise read as too spare. In a more layered or period setting, the chrome frame and the geometric severity of the triedri column provide a modernist counterpoint that prevents the room from becoming too retrospective. The vertical-horizontal flexibility is particularly valuable for designers working with unusual wall configurations — a narrow pier between windows, a low wall above a headboard, a pair of columns flanking a doorway — where standard sconce proportions rarely fit correctly. Sold as a matched pair, they are ready for symmetrical placement without the sourcing difficulty that makes finding two identical vintage Italian sconces genuinely challenging.
Dimensions
Each sconce measures 25¼ in (64 cm) in height, 8⅛ in (21 cm) in width, and 4¼ in (11 cm) in depth from the wall. The slender wall projection makes them suitable for corridors and transitional spaces where depth is limited. Each fixture takes 1 × E14 bulb; the pair takes 2 in total. A small warm-white globe or flame bulb in the 2200–2700K range is recommended — the smoked glass benefits from a warm source, which deepens the tonal quality of the prisms rather than cooling it.
Note: As with every hand-crafted Murano glass piece, slight variations in prism tone, edge definition, and surface character between individual triedri elements are intrinsic to the production process. They are not imperfections — they are the evidence of hand work, and the reason these sconces have a presence that manufactured glass cannot replicate. Please refer to the product photographs for full condition details.
