Alla Moda ‘Flower Painter’ – Designer’s Identity Revealed!

Milvia Flower Painter

The identity of the so-called ‘Flower Painter’, who decorated a wide range of mid-century modern Italian ceramics with quirky, colourful and cool stick people, animals and other objects during the 1950s & 60s, has long been a mysterious enigma. When building Graham Cooley’s ground-breaking ‘Alla Moda’ exhibition of 2012, and when I was compiling my […]

‘Flower Painter’ Mid-Century Italian Ceramics – An Update

A few months ago, I published a post about some exciting new Italian ceramics by the mysterious ‘Flower Painter’ that I had found. You can read the post by clicking here. As they sadly didn’t reveal the identity of the designer or factory, but just tantalised with more clues, I set the challenge of finding […]

Fratelli Fanciullacci Marks & Labels

It’s pretty typical for really rather good things to appear and come in just after I’ve printed a book on them. And, typically, those pieces answer a question that I hadn’t been able to solve before printing the book. In this instance it concerned Alla Moda, my new book on Italian mid-century pottery. My keen-eyed […]

More About The Flower Painter Mystery

Those of you who have bought Alla Moda, my new book on mid-century Italian ceramics, will have seen a double page spread of quirky ceramics by an as yet unknown company and designer who ‘signs’ each piece with a stylised four petalled flower. I’ve pretty much fallen in love with them! At the Midcentury Fair […]

They’re still out there – A Gambone Bargain!

My friend and fellow mid-century pottery fan Emiel Monnink of Retrominded and I were chatting online last week. I had just met a friend of his at the excellent Ardingly antiques fair, and he had just found a piece of Italian pottery for me to look at. I found the story fascinating, and (almost) completely […]

Alla Moda Italian Ceramics Exhibition Launches

It’s out and it’s on! Last Saturday I joined Graham Cooley at the King’s Lynn Arts Centre in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, to launch Alla Moda, the exhibition behind my latest book. With over 750 ceramics on display, Graham’s private collection is almost certainly the largest private collection of Italian ceramics in Europe, if not the […]

What’s behind my latest book?

My new book on mid-century modern Italian ceramics, Alla Moda, has just arrived, and the exhibition is about to be launched. Sitting last night looking through the book made me remember the long journey I’ve made putting it together. I also thought about all the elements that went into making it, here are some statistics: […]