In 1921, Paolo Venini, a lawyer from Milan with a passion for glass and a talent for business, founded his glass factory in partnership with Venetian Giacomo Cappellin, bringing fresh design ideas to Murano, home of Venice's glass industry. According to the Glass Encyclopedia, the glass industry in Venice "had been immune to outside design influences [having allowed] both the Arts and Crafts Movement and art nouveau era to pass by without any perceptible change." Within two years, the high artistic quality and originality of the Venini-Cappellin partnership was recognized at international exhibitions, leading one critic to comment, "Beyond doubt, the art of glass has been resurrected in our country." The partnership dissolved in 1925, and Venini went into business for himself, attracting a variety of talented designers to the factory, beginning with painter and free-lance designer Vittorio Zecchin. A later designer Carlo Scarpa, who joined the firm in 1932, is credited with developing a new "syntax" of glass, based on traditional techniques like lattimo. Between the World Wars and following World War II, Paolo Venini continued to be one of those responsible for a new artistic approach in the Venetian glass industry.