THE CHARACTERS
Alessandro Favaretto Rubelli
Alessandro Favaretto Rubelli (1931), the current president of the Rubelli company, is known to the employees as “Avvocato” (the lawyer). He joined the company in 1955, ten years after the death of Dante Zeno. As a young lawyer, his entry into the company was crucial, first to return control of the company to the family and then, after a decade of settling in, to begin the great adventure of conquering the foreign market. While Rubelli has always had privileged relations with a few selected clients from the Germanic and Anglo-Saxon world since the 1970s, the lawyer’s intuition has led to the development of productive relationships and the opening of a series of offices and showrooms all over the world, including London (early 1970s), Paris (1975), New York, Lyon (1994) and Dubai (1995).
Under his presidency, Rubelli has achieved international status: from foreign sales, which increased from 12% to the current 80%, to collaborations with world-class designers and artists.
ANCR (National Association of Combatants and Ex-Servicemen)
Founded on February 18, 1919, as the ANC (National Association of Combatants), as a branch of the ANMIG (National Association of War Wounded and Invalids), which had promoted its establishment at a meeting two years earlier. Beginning in 1923 with the new statutes approved at the 2nd Congress, it has taken on a completely non-partisan character, with a purpose aimed entirely at ensuring assistance to veterans.
Its refusal to participate in the March on Rome celebrations in October 1924 brought it into open conflict with the fascist regime, which dissolved its central organs in March 1925 and entrusted its national leadership to a government-appointed triumvirate and its local sections to fascist commissars.
In October 1946, after merging with the National Association of Ex-Prisoners of War, it further amended its bylaws and adopted its present name, the National Association of Combatants and Ex-Servicemen (ANCR), at the new congress in 1947.
Dante Zeno Rubelli
Dante Zeno Rubelli (1878-1945), son of the founder Lorenzo, joined his father in the management of the company at an early age, becoming a partner in 1910 and leading it through the hardships of two world wars to an early and substantial expansion.
With a business spirit that was able to weave relationships at all levels and to obtain very prestigious orders, it was under his leadership that collaborations were forged with the Royal House of Savoy and various ministries, as well as with artists of the caliber of Umberto Bellotto and Guido Cadorin. It was also under his leadership that the first branches were opened throughout Italy: Trieste in 1920; Florence – where, after the defeat of Caporetto (1917), the entire company was transferred for about three years and which, after that period, remained as a branch managed by his brother Italo Lorenzo and his wife Carolina Martini; Rome in 1926, then Milan, and in 1939 in Turin.
He died on August 1, 1945, after having suffered a heart attack that reduced his ability to work, leaving the company in the hands of his associates, Rodolfo Zinelli and Secondo Martini, for ten years. His grandson, Alessandro Favaretto Rubelli, took over the management of the company, following in the footsteps of his grandfather.
Giovanni Giuriati
Giovanni Giuriati (1876-1970) was a politician. He was president of the Chamber of Deputies and minister several times during the twenty years of fascism.
As a volunteer in World War I, where he was twice decorated with the Silver Medal, in 1919 he followed Gabriele D’Annunzio in the Fiume Endeavor. . After the Treaty of Rapallo, he joined the Fasci di combattimento (an Italian fascist organization) and made a rapid rise within the party that led him to hold numerous positions in the ten years between 1925 and 1934. In 1934 he did not stand for re-election to the Chamber of Deputies and, although he was appointed Senator, he effectively gave up political activity and returned to the legal profession. Asked to become Foreign Minister of the newly-formed Italian Social Republic in 1943, he declined. . His involvement with the regime, however, brought him to trial soon after the war; once acquitted (1947), he moved to Rome and completely renounced his political life.
Italo Lorenzo Rubelli
Italo Lorenzo Rubelli, Dante Zeno’s brother and a former major in the cavalry, together with his wife Carolina Martini, took over the management of the Florence branch of the company from 1920 – when the company, temporarily relocated there after the defeat at Caporetto, returned to Venice – until at least 1945. He was also in charge of the Rome branch, opened in 1926 and subordinated to the Florence branch until the late 1940s.
Fumagalli Weaving Mill
The Fumagalli Weaving Mill appears in Rubelli’s records as a subcontractor between 1923 and 1931. Often referred to as “Fumagalli” and sometimes as “Carlo Fumagalli”, there is currently no clear information on the location of production and the continuation of the company’s business.
Pizzi Weaving Mill in Veduggio
Active since at least 1912 (the year of the first recorded assignment for Rubelli) and run for a long time by Enea Pizzi, the weaving mill was active at least until 1961, when it still had 21 employees according to census data.
Umberto Bellotto
Umberto Bellotto (1882-1940) was an iron and glass artisan who was one of the first to combine the two arts with excellent results. A native of Venice, he began his apprenticeship in glassmaking at the firms of Artisti Barovier and Fratelli Toso in Murano, and from the beginning of the 20th century he collaborated with numerous master glassmakers and architects on both private homes and public buildings. During these productions, together with the architect Cesare Aurienti, he invented a technique of “iron and glass bonding”, which he patented in 1910.
His participation in several editions of the Venice Biennale (1914, 1920, 1922, 1924) and the Monza Triennial in 1925, as well as a series of solo exhibitions, including one in 1927 in the same city, earned him an ever-growing reputation, and in 1928 the Minister of Public Works, Giovanni Giuriati, appointed him official decorator of the capital’s public buildings.
