We conclude Venice Noir with our award to a writer we feel has made a significant contribution to the field of crime and thriller writing. Last year our first prize went, deservedly, to Ian Rankin who you can see testing the sharpness of it below…

Yes, it was a stunning piece of glass sculpture made by Barovier & Toso, one of Murano’s most famous furnaces. This year, thanks to the efforts of Marco Vidal, our champion on the ground in Venice alongside his wife Silvia Bandolin, we have another unique sculpture, one with a name: Lama d’Ombra — Blade of Shadow.

The piece is the work of Andrea Morucchio, an artist Marco has collaborated with for years and who, he says, never fails to come back with something extraordinary. A few months ago Marco asked him to create the trophy that will be presented to the Noir Author of the Year — the prize that sits at the heart of everything the festival stands for.

‘What he’s made is, without exaggeration, a showstopper,’ Marco says proudly.

A blade cut from glass and shadow

Marco again, ‘Lama d’Ombra marks Morucchio’s return to sculpture in glass, reworking a form that sits at the very origins of his artistic research. It’s a vertical, edged presence — a blade, unmistakably — rendered in a red so deep it reads almost as blood, rising from a base of blackened, charred-looking wood.

‘The effect is deliberately unsettling. Beauty and unease sit side by side in the same object; so do attraction and threat. That tension is the whole point. Lama d’Ombra was conceived specifically as the official award of Venice Noir Festival 2026, and it translates the genre’s preoccupations — mystery, darkness, danger, revelation — into a single physical gesture: a luminous blade that cuts through the dark, incises it, and drags what it finds there into the light. It’s hard to think of a more fitting image for a noir prize.’

Made in a Murano furnace

And here’s a short video showing its creation.

The glasswork was produced in collaboration with Roberto Beltrami of Wave Murano Glass, whose furnace turned Morucchio’s design into the piece’s blood-red blade. The wooden base — that black, seemingly carbonised surface the glass rises from — is the work of Saverio Pastor, a Venetian ebanista (cabinetmaker) whose craftsmanship gives the sculpture its grounding weight. The project also had support from CNA Artigiani e PMI Metropolitana Venezia, the local artisans’ association.

It’s the kind of piece that could only really come from Venice — glassworking traditions that go back centuries, put to entirely new, unsettling use.

Where to see it

Lama d’Ombra will be presented as part of Venice Glass Week, at the Libreria Studium in San Marco. If you’re in Venice, it will be on display there from 12 to 20 September — well worth a detour if you want to see it up close before it’s handed over.

The prize itself will be awarded to Venice Noir’s author of the year on 15 November 2026 in the Ridotto of the Hotel Monaco, once the casino Casanova used to frequent.

Who, I wonder, will go home with the prize this year?