The essay describes Marco Costantini’s work. From 1947 to 1966 his activity took place in

the factory of the Società Ceramica Italiana of Laveno, where he dealt with engraving for

the decoration of earthenware and porcelain, creating his own works or transpositions

from drawings by Guido Andlovitz, Antonia Campi, Leonor Fini, Mario Vellani Marchi, exhibited

at the Milan Triennale in 1951. In 1966 Costantini opened his workshop in Laveno

Mombello, where he continued his activity as engraver. The shop has been managed by his

successors since his death in 2003.

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 contribution aims to examine how the phenomenon of folk Vicenza ceramics during

the second half of the 19th century represented an effort by a provincial and artisanal

world to respond to industrial and mass-produced innovations, primarily originating from

England. Vicenza manufactories, in their endeavor to withstand the influx of stoneware

imports, had to reconsider their manufacturing processes, making them quicker and more

cost-effective. Consequently, they incorporated the use of masks, stencils, lace as a pattern

template for adorning plate rims, and shaped sponges in the decorative phase. This,

in turn, contributed to shaping both the forms and designs of what is commonly referred

to as folk 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.

Since the second half of the 1950s onwards, Gio Ponti established a long-lasting partnership

with Ceramica Joo Milano, the producer of high-relief glazed ceramic tiles, designed

by Ponti himself and used to clad the majority of his architectures. Ceramica Joo

Milano falls within the category of those manufacturing companies with a hybrid structural

setting, capable of merging industrial demands while preserving execution methods

associated with artisanal concepts and craftsmanship. This collaboration persisted

continuously for extended periods, supporting the Milanese architect not only in making

and exploring the multiple conditions of the design process but also in furthering a vision

and a line of thought consistently articulated in his writings. The products by Ceramica

Joo Milano fulfill Ponti’s pursuit of incorruptibility, famously expressed in his book Amate

l’architettura and numerous articles published in “Domus”, but also in the company’s advertisements

featured in the same magazine, which document and illustrate the values of

high-relief glazed ceramic coverings in modern architecture.

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.

Piero Fornasetti (1913-1988) is an artist with multiple aptitudes to whom critics have assigned

as many definitions. By investigating the Fornasetti designer we will discover the

Fornasetti painter, by delving deep er into the Fornasetti painter, we will find the Fornasetti

decorator, by declaring him a decorator we will discover the collector’s approach and

again that of the Fornasetti designer; a seamless circle.

The article intends to address the “invention” developed by Fornasetti in the decoration of

furniture production in an evolutionary key: from the single example to the mass production

started, independently, according to very modern criteria for the time. A path punctuated

by the Milanese triennials that from 1936 reaches up to 1951, the year in which he

exhibited the Trumeau Architettura, designed by Gio Ponti, now in the permanent collection

of the Victoria & Albert Museum. An experiment in total decoration that gave rise to

Piero Fornasetti’s highly original production.

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 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.