IN MEMORIAM | 1942 - 2018 ANDREA PFISTER

Andrea Pfister shoes from Carla Comelli's personal collection

Photograph: Irma Vivaldi

"I close my eyes and I walk around here [the shoe factory] and I smell: leather has one of the most wonderful smells, suede. The wooden heels have a smell, rhinestone buckles have a smell, the glue."

Andrea Pfister

Source: SF Gate

1983 | Andrea Pfister | The Mondrian Series

From Carla Comelli's personal collection

Photograph: Irma Vivaldi

ANDREA PFISTER
I N D E X

NOTE: Carla Comelli - of ERCO fame - was Andra Pfister's personal assistant for more than ten years.

IN MEMORIAM | 1957 - 2018 - MARK E. SMITH (THE FALL)

Mark E. Smith | detail
5 March 1957 - 24 January 2018
Photograph: Gabor Scott/Redferns

“Mark Smith defined description, and yet we all try. Genius, poet, punk, pioneer, mad bastard. All of that but none of that. 

Mark inspired all of us in The Fall to let go of preconceived notions of what a rock musician was… Nothing was contrived and nothing was insincere… For Mark E Smith, there were no rules.

Raise a glass, goodbye to my friend, soulmate and partner.”

Brix Smith

(Brix & The Extricated, former Fall guitarist & former Mrs Smith)

NME - February 14, 2018

Mark E. Smith | Early days of The Fall.
Photograph: Gabor Scott/Redferns
Source: Guardian

CALZATURIFICIO GRIMI E MASLA | PARABIAGO, MILAN

1925 | Calzaturificio Grimi e Masla

Illustrazione du Achille Luciani Mauzan

... nei primi giorni del 1920 nacque il: CALZATURIFICIO "SOLE" DI GRIMI E MASLA. Era una casa grandiosa, un grosso stabilimento di calzature in Parabiago. Il complesso era suddiviso nei vari reparti di tagliatori, orlatrici, tranciatori, spedizionieri, finissaggio, magazzini per il pellame e accessori, portineria, uffici, spogliatoi per uomini e donne, con relativi servizi. 

La grossa novità era però la manovia che occupava la parte centrale dello stanzone, per quasi tutta la sua lunghezza; senza dimenticare i nuovi macchinari dalla etichetta scritta in inglese. Ogni macchina era affidata a un singolo operaio per una specifica lavorazione; il nastro che correva sulla manovia portava avanti la scarpa fino al suo completamento, fino alle spazzole, al reparto finitura e spedizione.

Così scriveva il prof. Egidio Gianazza nella sua ricerca su "Uomini e Cose di Parabiago" a proposito del Calzaturificio SOLE di Grimi E Masla. Il calzaturificio produsse a Parabiago calzature da uomo, donna e bambino per quasi trent'anni, fino al 1940.

1925 | Calzaturificio Grimi e Masla

Illustrazione du Achille Luciani Mauzan

Source: Collezione Salce, Treviso; Auktionshaus Markus Weissenböck, Wien

Gianazza aggiunge inoltre:

Nelle vicinanze dello stabilimento la Società "Nizzola" aveva costruito una cabina per potenziare la fornitura di energia elettrica. Il marchio della ditta era stampigliato in una sottile lamina dorata sui sottopiedi, sulle scatole, sulle etichette applicate agli scatoloni da spedire. A carattere cubitale e a tinte diverse fu pure dipinto sul muro esterno dello stabilimento, quello che guardava verso la ferrovia poco distante, ben leggibile dai finestrini dei treni in corsa sulla stràa ferràa. 

I Sigg. Grimi lavoravano insieme con funzione di direzione e controllo, il Masla si faceva vedere raramente in fabbrica; praticamente partecipava solo alle riunioni del Consiglio.

In fabbrica lavoravano numerose persone, non solo di Parabiago, ma anche dei vari paesi vicini."

Egidio Gianazza, "Uomini e cose di Parabiago" -  2010 - Città di Parabiago

Carlo Grimi esercitava i ruoli di Presidente della Società, nonché consigliere d’Amministrazione e Direttore Tecnico. Al suo fianco, come Amministratore Delegato, Direttore Amministrativo e altro consigliere d’Amministrazione c’era il rag. Felice Bosio.

Nel 1936 furono depositati i marchi commerciali “Sole” e “Colonia”, ma in quello stesso anno il capitale di 820.000 L versato all’atto della costituizione societaria si era ridotto a 320.000 Lire. Erano I segni di una crisi che avrebbe portato Grimi nel 1939 a staccarsi dalla Società, che avrebbe cessato l‘attività l’anno successivo.

Il manifesto pubblicitario di cui sopra venne commissionato nel 1925 al francese Achille Luciano Mauzan, uno dei più affermati illustratori dell’epoca. 

NOTE/FONTI

Secondo la ricostruzione di E. Gianazza, la ditta era nata nel 1916 come “C.Grimi” ed era diventata nel 1917 “Grimi Carlo e C.”

La nuova denominazione della ditta divenne “Grimi e Masla” nel 1920, trasformata nel 1921 in “Soc.An. Calzaturificio Grimi e Masla”

Annuario Industriale della Provincia di Milano, Milano, Tip. F.lli De Silvestri, 1933

Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Archivio Marchi

Gazzetta Ufficiale, 12 agosto 1936

JANUARY 27, 2018 | HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY | GIORNATA DELLA MEMORIA

The photograph entitled Horror was created at the time Hitler came to power in 1933. The man’s shoe crushing the fragile china heads of a white skinned and a dark skinned doll is one of the most often reproduced of Mosinger’s photographs.

Source: AthenaPlus Museum

1932 | Horror
Photograph by Franjo Mosinger (Zagreb, 1899 – 1956)
Source: AthenaPlus Museum

TO REMEMBER

PRIMO LEVI [1919-1987]
SURVIVAL IN AUSCHWITZ

1991 | SUSANNA PIERATZKI
BIRTH

2005 | GYULA PAUER & CAN TOGAY
SHOES ON THE DANUBE PROMENADE

THE FOOTPRINTS FOR HOPE
PROJECT

MEMORIAL DAY 2015

MEMORIAL DAY 2016

MEMORIAL DAY 2017

1963 | GIROTTI & BELLINI | BOLOGNA

1963 | Girotti & Bellini

Bologna

Source: EMCI catalog (Ente Moda Calzature Italiane)

1963 | Girotti & Bellini

Bologna

Source: EMCI catalog (Ente Moda Calzature Italiane)

HELLSTORY
1955 | GIROTTI & BELLINI

1963 | Girotti & Bellini

Bologna

Source: EMCI catalog (Ente Moda Calzature Italiane)

ORHAN PAMUK | THE INNOCENCE OF SHOES

The culmination of decades of omnivorous collecting, Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence in Istanbul uses his novel of lost love, The Museum of Innocence, as a departure point to explore the city of his youth. 

Source: The Innocence Of Objects (back cover)

Box 2 (detail)

Photograph: Refik Anadol

My well-intentioned fiancée was wearing Sylvie, a perfume I’d always liked, and these imitation net stockings that, as she knew very well, aroused me, with high-heeled shoes. She arrived elated, thinking that my “sickness” was retreating, and I could not bring myself to tell her that, quite to the contrary, I had called her here to rescue me from the scourge, however briefly; that I longed to embrace her as I had embraced my mother when I was a child.

Orhan Pamuk

The Museum of Innocence (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009)

Box 2

One day I was inspired and sketched this box (below) with a pencil. We put the objects in the box according to that design, moving things around by the tiniest of fractions and relying on trial and error to get it right. Imagining the boxes one by one as objects beautiful in their own right has added a touch of lyricism to the museum.

Orhan Pamuk

Source: The Innocence Of Objects by Orhan Pamuk (Abrams, 2012)

Box 2 | Sanzelize Butik

Photograph: Refik Anadol

At least twice a day my mother would find an excuse to ring me at the office, and after telling me how long she had cried after coming across some possession of my father’s at the back of a wardrobe - his black-and-white summer spectator shoes, for example, one of which I respectfully display here - she would say, “Don’t leave me alone, please!” and would go on to remind me that I shouldn’t stay in Nişantaşı, that it wasn’t good for me to be alone either, and that she was definitely expecting me for supper in Suadiye.

Orhan Pamuk

The Museum of Innocence (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009)

Box 51

My father’s shoes, which my mother came across at the back of a wardrobe 

and cried over.

Source: The Innocence Of Objects by Orhan Pamuk (Abrams, 2012)

Box 23

Here I display Füsun’s white panties with her childish white socks and her dirty white sneakers to evoke our spells of silence.

Orhan Pamuk

Source: The Innocence Of Objects by Orhan Pamuk (Abrams, 2012)

Box 23

Photograph: Refik Anadol

Source: The Innocence Of Objects by Orhan Pamuk (Abrams, 2012)

Amore, musei, ispirazione. 
Il Museo dell’innocenza di Orhan Pamuk a Milano
Dal 19 gennaio al 24 giugno 2018
Museo Bagatti Valsecchi

Love, Museums and Inspiration. 
Orhan Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence in Milan
From January 19 to June 24, 2018
Museo Bagatti Valsecchi

Istambul | A view of the floor of the Museum of Innocence

Photograph: Refik Anadol

Source: The Innocence Of Objects by Orhan Pamuk (Abrams, 2012)

1963 | F.LLI AMODIO | MONTEVARCHI

1963 | Fratelli Amodio

Montevarchi, Arezzo

Source: EMCI catalog (Ente Moda Calzature Italiane)

1963 | Fratelli Amodio

Montevarchi, Arezzo

Source: EMCI catalog (Ente Moda Calzature Italiane)

1963 | Fratelli Amodio

Montevarchi, Arezzo

Source: EMCI catalog (Ente Moda Calzature Italiane)

1963 | BALLOTTA | BOLOGNA

1963 | Ballotta by M. Ballotta & C.

Bologna

Source: EMCI catalog (Ente Moda Calzature Italiane)

1963 | Ballotta by M. Ballotta & C.

Bologna

Source: EMCI catalog (Ente Moda Calzature Italiane)

1963 | Ballotta by M. Ballotta & C.

Bologna

Source: EMCI catalog (Ente Moda Calzature Italiane)

1967 | Ballotta
Bologna

1963 | Ballotta by M. Ballotta & C.

Bologna

Source: EMCI catalog (Ente Moda Calzature Italiane)

1963 | BRUNIS VIGEVANO

1963 | Brunis, Vigevano

Source: Calzature Italiane di Lusso

1963 | Brunis, Vigevano

Source: Calzature Italiane di Lusso

BRUNIS SHOE FACTORY
VIGEVANO

1963 | Brunis, Vigevano

Source: Calzature Italiane di Lusso

FERNANDA WANAMAKER HAS EVERYTHING

Wanamaker's Has Everything

Philadelphia Jenkintown Wilmington Wynnewood

It all started as a simple search, but there’s no such thing as a “simple search”.

The Greco shoes at the Philadelphia Museum of Art were donated by Mr. Rodman A. Heeren, a name we came up against perusing both the collections at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Mr. Rodman A. Heeren contributed the above collections with objects that belonged to his mother. Furthermore, donated in memory of his mother Fernanda Wanamaker. 

But who is Mr. Rodman A. Heeren?

1909 | Fernanda Wanamaker with her son Rodman

Source: Geni

Mr Rodman A. Heeren was the son of the first marriage of Fernanda Wanamaker with Arthur O. Heeren, son of Count Heeren. 

The marriage was celebrated in Paris in 1909. The Heerens belonged to the Spanish nobility, and the bride came from one of the most prominent - and wealthy - American families. The couple continued to be settled in Paris, but Fernanda used to spend long periods in Palm Beach as well.

1921 | Fernanda Wanamaker (Mrs Arturo de Heeren) 

Playing golf in Palm Beach

Photo Underwood and Underwood

Source: Vogue France

Fernanda Wanamaker (Dec. 9, 1887, Jenkintown, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania – Sep. 30, 1958, Hotel Continental, Paris, Paris, Île-de-France) was the eldest daughter of Lewis Rodman Wanamaker (1863-1928) of Philadelphia, and grand-daughter of John Wanamaker. Her grandfather John Wanamaker had founded the Philadelphia department store that bore his name. 

The family business started in 1861, when John Wanamaker, with his brother Brown, founded a men's clothing store in Philadelphia called Oak Hall. After his brother's death, Wanamaker purchased the abandoned Pennsylvania Railroad station to refurbished it into a store for men's clothing - and later for women's also - in the way of the London's Royal Exchange and Paris's Les Halles.

The Wanamaker's Department Store in Philadelphia

Source: The Department Store Museum

The department store favoured the French production in order to offer a choice of the new fashion trends, and to replicate them, if we may. The business passed onto his son Roland and the experiment of the department stores - one of the earliest in America - was so successful that when her father Lewis Rodman Wanamaker died in 1928, Fernanda shared with her siblings an estimated $120 million trust. 

At her father’s death time, Fernanda had already divorced with De Heeren (1923) and got married to Ector Orr Munn (the following year). With the second husband, before another divorce in 1948, she lived between Manhattan and Paris, constantly paying attention to fashions as a family tradition. She was a real socialite, friend with Elsie de Wolfe, lady Mendl and the Duchess of Windsor.

Early 1900 | Hellstern & Sons | Paris

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

Early 1900 | L. Perchellet | Paris

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Mrs. Ector Munn [Fernanda Wanamaker and Mrs. Harrison Williams, among others, chaired the American branch of Le Colis de Trianon-Versailles. In 1940, with the support of Lady Mendl and the Duchess of Windsor, they organized the exhibition Paris Openings to raise money for the French war charity. Held at the John Wanamaker Auditorium in New York, the exhibition featured evening dresses worn by members of the Windsor set.

Each dress was chosen for its “hallowed memory,” a dress that had been worn on some “Great Occasion.” These costumes reveal the supreme and unsurpassed craftsmanship of the couture métier in the five years leading up to World War II. At the same time, they reveal how the Duchess of Windsor and her set conscripted fashion - the very expression of their blithe lives - as a unified display of their support for the war effort." 

Andrew Bolton

Metropolitan Museum of Art

The donations by Fernanda's son to the museums read like a who's-who of the high fashion of the first decades of 20th century (mainly French) with evening dresses by Mainbocher, Schiaparelli, Paquin, Madame Grés, Lanvin-Castillo, Balenciaga, Pierre Cardin, Balmain, Chanel, Dior, Givenchy, Doucet, hats by Caroline Reboux, Paulette, or Rose Valois, Gloves by Aris, Alexandrine and Harry bags by Cartier. 

Early 1900 | Hellstern & Sons | Paris

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art

And finally footwear: shoes, bottes and galters. The oldest models are elegant and delicate evening shoes from the early 1900, by L. Perchellet and Hellstern & Sons, two of the oldest Parisian shoemakers dating back the 1870s (above).

Worthy of note two series of models by two brands of Italian origin: Ducerf Scavini and Nicolas Greco (Twenties and Thirties). We can partially amend the Philadelphia Museum dates about the models by Ducerf Scavini: those are earlier than 1935, as the company was sold to the famous Italian bottier, Nicolas Greco, in 1934. 

While in London and New York, Fernanda visited Thomas and Nancy Haggerty Shoes, Inc. 

Looking at the collection it looks like she favoured elegant and simple models (Oxford, pumps and t-strap), avoiding the most eccentric styles of the time. 

Also the colours are sober: we found Oxfords by Thomas in many shades of grey, black and brown. And the same goes for the T-Straps and pumps by Ducerf Scavini and Greco.

CA. 1920s | Thomas | London 

Source: Metrolopitan Museum of Art

“Walked then up affluent Avenue to the Champs, crossed the Place de la Concorde and browsed in the expensive shop windows on the Rue Royale by the Parthenon-imitation Eglise Madeleine, up the Rue de la Paix, glancing at sparkling diamonds, red delicate shoes and orange and smoky blue shoes and gold shoes (if I were wealthy, my idea of extravagance would be to have a closet full of colored shoes - just one or two styles: simple princess opera pump with tiny curved heel- in all the shades of the rainbow.) ” 

Sylvia Plath (1956)

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

In other words, Fernanda Wanamaker fulfilled the beloved novelist/poet Sylvia Plath’s secret wish: one model/style in ALL seasonal colors. After all, money was not object for the heiress of the Wanamaker empire.

CA. 1935

Center left and top right: Ducerf Scavini et Fils (Paris)

Center below: Nancy Haggerty Shoes, Inc. | New York

Source: Philadelphia Museum of Art

Nicolas Greco | Paris

Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art