Silver, Milan, made by San Lorenzo, 1995, desined and made by Franco Albini and Franca Helg, 1971

The shape of the bowl is a regular hemisphere. The base is small, circular and plain; the sides decorated with spiralled flutes which are further embossed with a continuous series of small beads, similar in appearance to the grains on a corn cob.

A retrospective exhibition of the work of the silversmiths’ studio, San Lorenzo, was held in the Victoria & Albert Museum from October 5 1995 until April 30, 1996 (see RF 94/1983). Part of the original proposal read as follows;

" The studio of San Lorenzo was formed in 1970 with the express purpose of creating a new idiom in sterling silver. With a nucleus of a small group of designers whose aim was and remains to produce high quality designs in sterling, San Lorenzo implemented a select band of products in batch production runs with a strong emphasis on finely detailed quality, both in respect to the design and the workmanship."

This effectively was a description of the firm’s founding policy statement. The exhibition proved that the San Lorenzo studio has succeeded in consistently maintaining a range of very high quality products throughout the twenty five years of their existence. The policy of its founder and managing director, Ciro Cacchione, has been to commission major Italian architects exclusively to provide designs for his silverware. The result of this collaboration has been modern innovative design in a medium which the British public in particular has consistently viewed in traditional terms. The British myopic view towards contemporary silver has been largely responsible for the steady and persistent decline of British manufacturing silverware since the second world war. What the Italians have proved, and the San Lorenzo studio in particular, is that it is commercially possible to produce and sell high quality silverware in a thoroughly modern idiom.

A small but representative selection of the San Lorenzo production has been chosen from this exhibition M.60 - M.67-1996). The range illustrates designs produced in the studio’s early years (Such as this cob bowl designed by Albini & Helg, 1971) as well as the lobed carafe designed by Afra & Tobia Scarpa (1990) [M.66-1996]. The architects represented in this range have significant international reputations. There is inevitably a bias towards the Scarpa partnership in this selection because they have provided the greater number of designs to San Lorenzo from any one architectural practice. They have worked most closely and consistently with Ciro Cacchione over the past twenty years.

Each piece is fully marked with a series of marks that emulates (although does not copy) the British hallmarking system. Further information and full biographies of each of the contributing designers is provided in the catalogue that accompanied the V&A exhibition.

The studio of San Lorenzo was formed in 1970. Its express purpose was to create a new idiom in sterling silver. The small group of designers that formed its nucleus aimed to produce high quality designs in sterling. San Lorenzo implemented a select band of products in batch production runs. There was strong emphasis on finely detailed quality, both in design and workmanship.

Franca Helg joined the Milanese architectural practice of Franco Albini in 1930. The practice carried out some of the major building projects in Northern Italy of the mid 20th century. These included the La Rinascente department store in the Piazza Fiume in Rome and the fittings for the first two lines of the Milan underground system (from 1962).

M.60-1996