The article aims to reconstruct a path within the research of Ettore Sottsass jr., an architect,

artist and designer who, since the early stages of his career, dedicated a particular attention

to the theme of the decorated surface of the objects and found since the Fifties an

unexplored potential in a new material, the plastic laminate. Turning his gaze to the mass

production, Sottsass started from the production of a few first prototypes and reached an

international affirmation with the new iconographies of Memphis in the 1980s: nowasays

his projects represent significant case studies for reflecting on the expressive and communicative

possibilities of the “skin of objects”.

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.

For the 50th anniversary of the soft seat “Le Bambole,” B&B offers a reissue signed by

its original author, Mario Bellini. The short essay questions the changes in meaning of an

object born in the effervescent context of the 1970s counterculture and re-presented today

as one of the characters in the Made in Italy play, including through the changes in

visual registers used for its communication/promotion.

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.

During the years of reconstruction, the department store La Rinascente became the promoter,

with Gio Ponti’s contribution, of Apem (Artigianato Produzione Esportazione Milano),

a company to support Italian craftsmanship in order to promote its export.

Apem would be short-lived and the intended goal would not be achieved; nevertheless, in

that period Ponti involved several artists and ceramists in the initiative, as well as the best

craftsmen, with whom he made some objects himself.

The essay is a systematization, made from the few available sources functional to the

reconstruction of Apem’s history, placed in the broader Italian context of the Marshall

Plan with related companies such as Cna (Compagnia nazionale artigiana) or Enapi. On

the sidelines, it emerges how La Rinascente, from the immediate postwar period to the

founding of the Compasso d’Oro award in the early 1950s, played a key role in the design

culture of Italian design, marking some fundamental steps.

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 text presents, for the first time in an organic way, the works carried out by Xanti Shawinsky

for commissions from Trieste between the first months of 1934 and 1935. The artist

in this period works for the Studio Boggeri in Milan, the most innovative and updated in

the country, which entrusts him with the tasks examined on these pages ranging from the

creation of sketches for covers and posters to the study and design of company logos and

complex mechanical realizations. The clients of the Firm are on this occasion: the Lloyd

Triestino Press Office and Illy Caffè.

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.

Through the case of the Zileri art institute in Rome, the essay reflects on the contribution of

the handicraft schools to the renewal of the repertoires and taste of Italian decorative arts

between the end of the WWII and the affirmation of industrial design. Considering the first

years of activity of this all-girl private high school, run by the Ursuline nuns and specialised

in textile production and leatherwork, is relevant for the quality of the education given to

the students. Responsible for that was the painter Toti Scialoja, headmaster of the school

until 1950, and a very selected teaching staff that included valued artists and/or artisans

like Bice Lazzari (who was starting to affirm herself as an abstract painter), Maria Marino

and Marcella Toppi.

A year-end exhibition hosted in the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome in the summer

of 1950 demonstrates how the students had developed a modern sensibility in art, embracing

a non-referential language. At the same time, the press reviews of the exhibition

document the reception of their works, giving an insight into the debate around abstract

art. This event and the participation of the school at the 9th Milan Triennial in 1951 reveal

the appreciation recognised to the Zileri institute from two of the most prestigious institutions

active in Italy at that time in support of the contemporary artistic research and the

attention paid by these realities to the new generation in training.

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 takes its cue from a text that Gio Ponti published in 1949 to describe the multifaceted

activity of Pietro Chiesa (1892-1948), a longtime friend and fellow artist, and with

him artistic director of Fontana Arte. The «romantics» and «amusements» are, in fact, for

Ponti objects in which the exuberance of Chiesa’s imagination grants him explorations

into other eras or ironic games. The expression “storehouse of ideas”, penned by Chiesa in

some of the sheets in which he notes and imprisons fleeting ideas to be sifted and, if appropriate,

developed, is worth recalling the multiplicity of cues that makes up his visual and

creative baggage and that is particularly reflected in the «romantics» and «amusements»:

from objects from all eras and origins in his heterogeneous art collection (including those

from the Romantic period) to his encounters with contemporary Italian and international

artists (including the Surrealists).

Proposing a selection of examples, the text aims to show how in the «romantics» and

«amusements» objects the creative process of Chiesa does not follow schemes or programmatic

principles, but relies on falling in love with a form or matter and the fun of creation,

without ever forgetting the rigor and seriousness necessary for perfect execution:

all indispensable elements for achieving what he himself had called the «joys of art that

cannot be constrained in a formula».

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 Sicilian carts have been, and are, the expression of an important popular artistic culture,

heritage of the Sicilian people, which has influenced industrial and artisanal artistic

productions and even contemporary design. The essay analyzes three cases: the series

of furniture by Ernesto Basile, produced by Ducrot around 1906 and some creations by

Ducrot and others from the mid-1920s; a group of furnishings made in the 1920s and

1930s, in the style of the Catania carts; the dazzling contemporary creations of Dolce and

Gabbana stylists.

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.

Paper furnishings: the designs for furniture from the Lenci manufacture

The Lenci manufactory, founded in Turin in 1919 by Elena König and her husband Enrico

Scavini, specialized in the creation of puppets and dolls in colored fabric, wooden toys,

clothing and fashion items, adding a more limited production of furniture for children’s

rooms and home decoration accessories, designed by leading artists called to collaborate

over the years with the company. The paper analyzes Gigi Chessa, Mario Sturani and

Giuseppe Porcheddu’s inventions through a corpus of drawings and technical projects

conserved in a private collection in Turin, which allow us to highlight the co-existence

within the Lenci repertoire of different stylistic trends, starting from furnishings inspired

by shapes and models of the past to arrive at the experiments closer to the innovations

of international Déco, up to the typical production in Lenci style, characterized by bright

colors, original forms and iconographic references taken from the world of fairy tales and

childhood.

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.

TIn the two decades during which Angiolo Mazzoni del Grande (Bologna 1894 - Rome 1979)

worked as an architect-engineer, and therefore as a technical manager, of the Ministry of

Communications of the Kingdom of Italy, starting from 1921 and up to the Second World

War, draws up projects and builds buildings relating to a large number of institutional assignments;

his architectures for post office buildings, railway stations, social housing, and

technical or service buildings (but also for free time) cover a significant share in the category

of public buildings identified as a witness to the institutional mystique of the Fascist

period. Mazzoni vigorously interprets the ethos based on the principle of robustness as

a metaphor for virtue and reliability; but at the same time his position as an integral designer,

and therefore also oriented to the (often planned) insertion of works of art both as

endowments and as an integral part of the architectural context, is almost an updated

re-proposition of the ideal of design culture of the modernist period, albeit with aesthetic

decks of very different sign. His will and the actual achievements for his architectures of

iconic accessories, whose cultural possibilism reveals a versatile profile even in consideration

of the declared preference for the Futurists (even if limited in time), have contributed

in a decisive way to that movement. of ideas and opinions which, within a few years, would

lead to the formulation of the Law of 11 May 1942, n. 839, with which the then Minister of

National Education Giuseppe Bottai established the principles to regulate and encourage

the creation or introduction of works of art in public buildings; Republican Italy, in 1949,

would have relaunched these proposals with very different political and cultural purposes

but, nevertheless, similarly indebted to the direction indicated by Mazzoni’s work.

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 purpose of this paper is to reconsider the vicissitudes of Albisolese ceramics inspired

by the past, which, during the twentieth century, though undervalued compared to the

privileged circuit of art although his production has been conspicuous and uninterrupted

in the area’s factories. Buoyed by the examples of the historicist revival of eclectic taste

and the vehicle of knowledge and dissemination constituted by the proliferation of major

exhibitions, local entrepreneurs, beginning in the late 20th century, intended to revive the

Baroque splendor and Rococo graces of Ligurian majolica of the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries, creating a composite style, defined as “ancient Savona.” Among the most

talented creators of this decoration were Dario Ravano and Romeo Bevilacqua. Their repertoires

and not the antique prototypes came to be the models to be followed by the painters

who worked in the manufactories, which sprang up in large numbers in the Albisole

after World War I, thanks to the contingency favorable to crafts and applied arts and, after

World War II, thanks to the economic boom and the considerable flow of tourism that had

poured into the Ligurian Riviera.

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.