VICTORIA ARDUINO
Victoria Arduino was created in Turin in 1905. The company had the merit of spreading across Italy and the world the Italian espresso coffee machines, which were the first in world to have a steam-powered engine. The founder, Mr. Pier Teresio Arduino, a real gentleman of great intelligence and of great social sensibility, dedicated the name of the trademark to his wife, Victoria. A pioneer like Mr. Arduino, who intended to develop a production of high quality and of operative espresso coffee machines, couldn’t help choosing the “golden eagle” as his brand symbol.
This logo, realized in hand-chiselled bronze, is still today an imitated icon and a reference for all producers and collectors in the world.
The first brand coffee machine, known as “column-shaped model”, was produced in copper and brass, with a cylindrical form.
The mere technical aspect had to cohabit with an attractive aesthetics, based on functional and decorative principles, as it was a massive element used also to catalyse the interest of bar or cafés customers. For functional reasons, as the boiler had a vertical structure, it is clear that the column-like shape was the most logic solution for the realization of the machine body.
The polished volume so realized, enriched with shiny materials and relief decorations, made it an outstanding machine on bar and café counters, a really impressive device. But Mr. Pier Teresio Arduino did not limit himself to manufacture and market coffee machines. He also devoted himself to enhance and cultivate the image of his company.
In this respect, he relied on the contribution of important artists and designers, whose creations contributed to make the trademark famous for all the century. Among the others, we should remember one of the best-known commercial poster designers in Europe, Leonetto Capiello, who created a brand image which obtained a wide consensus.
At that time, the fashion of drinking espresso coffee rapidly spread into all cafés and into the most refined patisseries of Europe.
In 1920, Victoria Arduino company opened subsidiaries all over the world, and became more and more known and appreciated by coffee market. But, as most of Italian industrial plants, with the outburst of the World War II, the company had to reduce its production, to fully restart in the postwar period.
And if the life of a tree
And its branches and trunk grow upwards above the land,
Its roots extend underneath.
And this means that the past nourishes the future.
Heaven help those who do not cultivate the memory:
They are people who sow not the sweep of fields
But a wasteland of cement. |
