princeton architectural press new york

princeton architectural press
new york
INTRODUZIONE
6
Published by Princeton Architectural Press
37 East Seventh Street ✦ New York, New York 10003
Visit our website at www.papress.com.
© 2014 Louise Fili Ltd
All rights reserved ✦ Printed and bound in China.
17 16 15 14 4 3 2 1 First edition.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the
publisher, except in the context of reviews.
Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright.
Errors or omissions will be corrected in subsequent editions.
p r o j e c t e d i t o r Sara Stemen
CLASSICO
8
TRADIZIONALE
46
ECLETTICO
110
F U T U R I S TA E FA S C I S TA
17 8
LA STRADA
208
LA SPIAGGIA
220
d e s i g n e r s Louise Fili, Spencer Charles, and Kelly Thorn/Louise Fili Ltd
s p e c i a l t h a n k s t o Meredith Baber, Sara Bader, Nicola Bednarek Brower, Janet Behning, Megan Carey,
FA N TA S M A
236
Carina Cha, Andrea Chlad, Barbara Darko, Benjamin English, Russell Fernandez, Will Foster, Jan Hartman,
Jan Haux, Diane Levinson, Jennifer Lippert, Katharine Myers, Lauren Palmer, Jay Sacher, Rob Shaeffer, Andrew
Stepanian, Paul Wagner, and Joseph Weston of Princeton Architectural Press —Kevin C. Lippert, publisher
IL PITTORE
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: TK
LE FOTO
250
257
GRAZIE
264
C
l a s s i c s i g n a g e i n i t a ly i s a u n i q u e
b l e n d o f OT T O C E N T O ( n i n e t e e n t h -
century) style and Stile Liberty (art nouveau). Signs
for cinemas, pharmacies, hardware stores, jewelers, or
butcher shops can be made from any combination of materials, including gold leaf, brass, marble, wood, enamel, and
wrought iron.
In Turin, businesses from the most humdrum to the
most sought-after shine with magnificent and well-maintained gold leaf, or foglia d’oro: the ferramenta sign (page
40), for a hardware store, is as majestic as it is massive. A
short walk from there is the deliciously elegant cursive lettering for Vincenzo Capello (pages 26-27), a jewelry store
since 1846. The ornately carved wooden letters for Rocca
Grandi Magazzini (pages 26-27), a nineteenth-century shop
that introduced Swiss watches to Italy, are lovingly finished
with gold leaf. Seeing the colossal sign for Cinema Lux (pages
32-33), tucked inside a busy galleria, always elicits a gasp.
The sheer scale of it is breathtaking, as is the sculpted ornamental detailing. The theater, amazingly, is still in operation.
8
A walk through the charming town of Lucca is a virtual
museum tour of Italian gold leaf: the stunning Stile Liberty
sign for Forno a Vapore (page 19) with added hand-painted
detailing, announces a bakery that is indeed still operating.
The half-moon ornamental sign for Ditta P. Galliani (pages
24-25) continues to grace the shop entrance with its shadowed sans serif lettering and metal Stile Liberty ornament.
The nineteenth-century Farmacia di San Marco in
Florence, once a pharmacy run by Dominican monks, has
been closed since the end of World War I, although the
facade (pages 10-11) remains intact, with delicate and varied
letterforms carved into a series of four marble panels advertising elixirs and remedies. In a similar manner, signs for a
series of butcher shops in Rome—a polleria, a macelleria, and
Abbacchi e Frattaglie (pages 12-13) were carved and painted
in a delicate script in 1880.
Brass is showcased in Florence in everything from Credito
Italiano (page 28) to a stylish stenciled sign for Guanti Borse
(page 29), and in Turin for the elegantly crafted signs for
Caffè Torino and Caffè Bar Università (pages 26-27).
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