This essay aims to point out a specific part of Piero Simondo’s (Cosio di Arroscia 1928-Turin 2020) plastic production oriented towards the free decoration of everyday objects, mainly wooden furniture and ceramic furnishings. This is a clear speculative demonstration of the theories of autonomous decoration of environments as an alternative way to industrial design, matured in the circles linked to the International Movement for an Imaginist Bauhaus, aimed at strengthening the emotional dialogue between art, craftsmanship, and architecture of spaces. An artist, educator, and theorist of logical and experimental thought, active in Alba since the early 1950s and then in Turin since the early 1960s, Simondo is best known for being – with Asger Jorn and Pinot Gallizio – among the founders of the Experimental Laboratories of the Imaginist Bauhaus (Alba, 1955) and – with Guy Debord, Ralph Rumney, Elena Verrone, Walter Olmo, Jorn and Gallizio – of the Situationist International (Cosio di Arroscia, 1957). Indeed, his theoretical, artistic, pedagogical, and experimental activity extends far beyond the perimeter of such neo-avant-garde movements, which he abandoned as early as 1958. In particular, with the creation in Turin in 1962 of the CIRA (Cooperative Center for an International Institute of Artistic Research) collective and the subsequent direction of educational and audiovisual workshops for the Institute of Pedagogy of the University of Turin, Simondo expressed an autonomous and independent vision of the role of the artist in technological and consumer society, while continuing in parallel his artistic action, within which it is possible to isolate a free and constant line of decoration over time. Relying on archival research and bringing to light previously unpublished materials and documents, this essay will attempt to historically and critically frame Piero Simondo’s seemingly centrifugal and decentralized production, which ranges from painted furniture to decorative panels and tapestry, from tea sets to informal, more or less functional ceramics.

Giorgio Levi

Giorgio Levi, triestino di nascita e pisano di adozione, è stato professore ordinario di Informatica fino al 2012: uno dei fondatori della prestigiosa scuola pisana, ricercatore noto a livello internazionale, insignito dell’ordine del Cherubino. Da anni collezionista di ceramica italiana del primo novecento, si è trasformato in studioso, dedicandosi alla riscoperta e valorizzazione di ceramisti, manifatture e distretti ceramici dimenticati o mai studiati in modo scientifico. Ha pubblicato 7 libri e curato 2 mostre.

In the years of the “Reconstruction” and the “Economic Miracle”, the newfound status of Palermo as the administrative and political “capital” of Sicily, albeit in relation to Regional Autonomy, also corresponds to the widespread desire to resume that proactive role in relation to the culture of furnishing and interior design that had shown itself to be excellent especially during the Belle Époque. The corporate relaunch of the historic Ducrot furniture factory was one of the most striking aspects of this orientation: it concerned, in fact, the reaffirmation of the company also in the sector of assignments for the furnishing of public and private institutional offices, hotels and public places. A sector, this, for which the choices of the designers of the company’s Technical Office are oriented towards a cautious modernity, often with twentieth-century references. Already in the period between 1944 and 1955 the furniture factory reaffirmed its productive proactivity by carrying out large orders and reactivating the sales network (with warehouses in Rome in Piazza Mignanelli, in Palermo in Via Generale Magliocco, in Genoa in Via Petrarca and in Naples in Via Immacolatella Nuova). Among the naval commissions of this period, in addition to the complete transformation of the cabins and lounges of ships of important shipping companies (such as Italia, Adriatica and Tirrenia), of particular importance are the furnishings designed by the company’s Technical Office between 1951 and 1956 for the motor vessels Città di Tunisi, Città di Napoli, Campania Felix, Franca Costa, Lipari and Sardegna, for the turboship Andrea Doria (1951-1953) and then for the transatlantic liner Leonardo da Vinci, the last major assignment undertaken already in critical business conditions (1958-1960) but in the wake of the formidable success achieved with the furnishings of the transatlantic liner Cristoforo Colombo (1953). The company, although now accustomed to availing itself of the contribution of qualified external designers (among whom, in addition to the names of Luigi Ciarlini and Amedeo Luccichenti with Vincenzo Monaco, are the names of Bruno Munari, Gustavo Puitzer-Finali, Guglielmo Ulrich and, in the Palermo area, of Michele Collura and Antonio Santamaura) and of the collaboration of leading artists (including Edoardo Alfieri, Alberto Burri, Ettore Sessa 1 Corrado Cagli, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Antonio Corpora, Emanuele Luzzatti, Mario Mafai, Edgardo Mannucci, Marcello Mascherini, Fausto Pirandello, Mimmo Rotella, Giuseppe Santomaso, Giulio Turcato, Emilio Vedova and Giovanni Zoncada), will no longer pursue an original cultural policy as in the first three decades of the twentieth century, limiting itself to recording, with polite interpretative taste and measured original proposals, the results of the new orientations of the culture of industrial design. Once the mirage of the Italian “Economic Miracle” had faded, the factory entered a long period of crisis, during which it tried again to win large contracts; but the collapse of its production structure and even more of its distribution structure, now inadequate to take on considerable contracts (also due to the lack of support from credit institutions), would have progressively thwarted any attempt at recovery.

Giorgio Levi

Giorgio Levi, triestino di nascita e pisano di adozione, è stato professore ordinario di Informatica fino al 2012: uno dei fondatori della prestigiosa scuola pisana, ricercatore noto a livello internazionale, insignito dell’ordine del Cherubino. Da anni collezionista di ceramica italiana del primo novecento, si è trasformato in studioso, dedicandosi alla riscoperta e valorizzazione di ceramisti, manifatture e distretti ceramici dimenticati o mai studiati in modo scientifico. Ha pubblicato 7 libri e curato 2 mostre.

Giulio Rosso, Vittorio Zecchin, Fausto Melotti, Tomaso Buzzi, Giovanni Gariboldi and Ugo Carà are the most important artists who designed laces exhibited at the Monza-Milan Triennali between 1927 and 1933. The essay documents most of their works, accompanying them with those presented at the Venice Bienniali between 1928 and 1932 or published in “Domus” in the same period.

Giorgio Levi

Giorgio Levi, triestino di nascita e pisano di adozione, è stato professore ordinario di Informatica fino al 2012: uno dei fondatori della prestigiosa scuola pisana, ricercatore noto a livello internazionale, insignito dell’ordine del Cherubino. Da anni collezionista di ceramica italiana del primo novecento, si è trasformato in studioso, dedicandosi alla riscoperta e valorizzazione di ceramisti, manifatture e distretti ceramici dimenticati o mai studiati in modo scientifico. Ha pubblicato 7 libri e curato 2 mostre.

Milan is the city where, in the 20th century, we find the greatest density of artisan workshops specializing in stained glass windows. It is also the place where modern materials and languages were experimented with. These new achievements can be seen firs in the area of stained glass for civil use but gradually began to find application in sacred stained glass as well. This evolution is particularly evident in the years when Giovanni Battista Montini, later pope Paul VI, lived. He witnessed the renewal of sacred art in France and then promoted a similar process in Italy. At the beginning of the century, workshops such as Beltrami e C., Corvaya and Bazzi or the roman Giuliani workshop followed nineteenth-century traditions, but later, especially in the 1930s, it emerges how the language of Novecento Italiano and artists of other modern tendencies found expression in the field of stained glass, especially thanks to the artisans of the FontanaArte workshop. In the 1940s and 1950s there was also a moderate renewal in the Milan Cathedral’s stained glass, but the real changes were observed in the 1960s: in the Duomo building site the first female creator of stained glass, Amalia Panigati arrives; in Gio Ponti’s architectures, a new three-dimensionality of stained glass was experimented thanks to the collaboration with FontanaArte and Fornace Venini. Lastly, in the early 1970s, the lyrical abstractionism of Costantino Ruggeri’s stained glass flourished.

Giorgio Levi

Giorgio Levi, triestino di nascita e pisano di adozione, è stato professore ordinario di Informatica fino al 2012: uno dei fondatori della prestigiosa scuola pisana, ricercatore noto a livello internazionale, insignito dell’ordine del Cherubino. Da anni collezionista di ceramica italiana del primo novecento, si è trasformato in studioso, dedicandosi alla riscoperta e valorizzazione di ceramisti, manifatture e distretti ceramici dimenticati o mai studiati in modo scientifico. Ha pubblicato 7 libri e curato 2 mostre.

The essay examines the ceramic production of Signa artist Enzo Borgini (1934-2021). The paper opens with a brief biographical note that traces the most significant events in the Tuscan artist’s life: beginning with his formative experience at the Villaggio Artigiano del Fanciullo, then moving on to his academic studies and those carried out as a self-taught artist, his work at ceramic factories in the area (Zecchi Ceramiche, Manifattura di Signa, Ceramiche Pugi and Ceramiche Bagni), and the international and national exhibitions in which he participated or in which he was a protagonist. The larger part of the contribution, on the other hand, is devoted to the study of the ceramics made by Borgini over the years, delving into subjects, themes and techniques used, from erotic series to those with ‘figures’and crowds, to self-portraits and animals. What emerges is the personality of an original artist, always inclined to experimentation who, despite living on the margins of the great contemporary art system, is of extreme interest.

Giorgio Levi

Giorgio Levi, triestino di nascita e pisano di adozione, è stato professore ordinario di Informatica fino al 2012: uno dei fondatori della prestigiosa scuola pisana, ricercatore noto a livello internazionale, insignito dell’ordine del Cherubino. Da anni collezionista di ceramica italiana del primo novecento, si è trasformato in studioso, dedicandosi alla riscoperta e valorizzazione di ceramisti, manifatture e distretti ceramici dimenticati o mai studiati in modo scientifico. Ha pubblicato 7 libri e curato 2 mostre.

Arrigo Visani (1914-1987) works at the “Cooperativa Ceramica d’Imola” (C.C.I.) from June 1946 to January 1951. During the first year he attends Giorgio Morandi’s drawing and engraving lessons at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, resumed after the war parenthesis. In the Artistic Section of C.C.I. he creates “ex novo” a varied series of bottles: among them the ones known as Imola’s “living” or “animated” bottles. In these latter he conveys, with the poetical sensitivity and the technical mastery widely recognized to him, a personal and precocious interpretation of his teacher’s psicology of art and the suggestions stemming from his extraordinary formal lesson. The current statutory anonymity of C.C.I. has unfortunately favoured a certain arbitrariness of attribution of this kind of ceramics, both in literature and in various art shows dedicated to that period. This article intends to restore Visani’s full artistic authorship.

Giorgio Levi

Giorgio Levi, triestino di nascita e pisano di adozione, è stato professore ordinario di Informatica fino al 2012: uno dei fondatori della prestigiosa scuola pisana, ricercatore noto a livello internazionale, insignito dell’ordine del Cherubino. Da anni collezionista di ceramica italiana del primo novecento, si è trasformato in studioso, dedicandosi alla riscoperta e valorizzazione di ceramisti, manifatture e distretti ceramici dimenticati o mai studiati in modo scientifico. Ha pubblicato 7 libri e curato 2 mostre.

The discovery of two pewter objects stamped with the signature Ettore Sottsass 17 encouraged me to research the beginning of Cleto Munari’s activity. The protagonist of 20^th century jewelery and designer silverware design, who spoke about himself in a long interview, began his career thanks to a metal with very ancient origins but modest value.

Giorgio Levi

Giorgio Levi, triestino di nascita e pisano di adozione, è stato professore ordinario di Informatica fino al 2012: uno dei fondatori della prestigiosa scuola pisana, ricercatore noto a livello internazionale, insignito dell’ordine del Cherubino. Da anni collezionista di ceramica italiana del primo novecento, si è trasformato in studioso, dedicandosi alla riscoperta e valorizzazione di ceramisti, manifatture e distretti ceramici dimenticati o mai studiati in modo scientifico. Ha pubblicato 7 libri e curato 2 mostre.

The essay analyzes the works presented at the Triennali delle Arti Decorative of Monza-Milan in 1927 and 1930 by four important Sicilian artists, standard bearers of déco and futurism: Paolo Bevilacqua, Pippo Rizzo, Alberto Bevilacqua and Alfio Fallica.

Giorgio Levi

Giorgio Levi, triestino di nascita e pisano di adozione, è stato professore ordinario di Informatica fino al 2012: uno dei fondatori della prestigiosa scuola pisana, ricercatore noto a livello internazionale, insignito dell’ordine del Cherubino. Da anni collezionista di ceramica italiana del primo novecento, si è trasformato in studioso, dedicandosi alla riscoperta e valorizzazione di ceramisti, manifatture e distretti ceramici dimenticati o mai studiati in modo scientifico. Ha pubblicato 7 libri e curato 2 mostre.

The article traces the significant stages of the famous exhibition of Ferragamo “Seta”,

which ended in 2022, based on its catalog and the essays that compose it.

Starting from the introductory contribution of Stefania Ricci, emphasis has been placed

on the evolution of the foulard of the famous Maison to our days, from the history of the

textile market in the second half of the 20th century, passing through the figure of Fulvia,

the fourth daughter of Salvatore, and of her role in the company and in the art of silk since

1971, to the contributions of artists and students who paid tribute to this precious and at

the same time democratic yarn of the silkworm.

Particular importance is given to the creative process of the “quadro printed on silk”, to

the historical-artistic influences and to the craftsmen and techniques that have led and

lead to its realization, with particular attention to the different characteristics and types

become symbol and icon of the brand.

Contrasts, influences and references to which the noble and imaginative fashion accessory

of Ferragamo lends itself to reflect and accompany the social life over the decades.

Giorgio Levi

Giorgio Levi, triestino di nascita e pisano di adozione, è stato professore ordinario di Informatica fino al 2012: uno dei fondatori della prestigiosa scuola pisana, ricercatore noto a livello internazionale, insignito dell’ordine del Cherubino. Da anni collezionista di ceramica italiana del primo novecento, si è trasformato in studioso, dedicandosi alla riscoperta e valorizzazione di ceramisti, manifatture e distretti ceramici dimenticati o mai studiati in modo scientifico. Ha pubblicato 7 libri e curato 2 mostre.

The paper discusses the diffusion in Italy of the three most important English printed decorations

(transferware), “Willow”, “Colandine” and “Ferrara” and their relevance from a production-

economic point of view for the big ceramic industries (Richard-Ginori, Galvani

and SCI of Laveno) and for small companies such as those in the San Michele degli Scalzi

district of Pisa.

Giorgio Levi

Giorgio Levi, triestino di nascita e pisano di adozione, è stato professore ordinario di Informatica fino al 2012: uno dei fondatori della prestigiosa scuola pisana, ricercatore noto a livello internazionale, insignito dell’ordine del Cherubino. Da anni collezionista di ceramica italiana del primo novecento, si è trasformato in studioso, dedicandosi alla riscoperta e valorizzazione di ceramisti, manifatture e distretti ceramici dimenticati o mai studiati in modo scientifico. Ha pubblicato 7 libri e curato 2 mostre.