I.l.s.a. Biography
The anonymous company "ILSA" (Industria Ligure Stoviglie e Affini), with headquarters in via Genova 16, Albisola Capo, was founded, replacing the "SACA" (Società Anonima Cooperativa Avanti), on 5 September 1922 and in April 1923 it becomes a joint stock company with president Santino Poggi and vice president Francesco Schiappapietra. In 1925 the company's registered office was transferred to Genoa and management entrusted to Francesco Perotti from Savona. The company specializes in the industrial production of kitchen and workware for over 150 employees. Since 1928, Perotti has combined industrial production with an artistic section of ancient and twentieth-century style ceramics under the direction, until 1932, of Ivos Pacetti. In those years the manufacture availed itself, among others, of the collaboration of Mario Raimondi. From 1933 Nino Strada succeeded Ivos Pacetti in the role of artistic director. In 1938 the factory exhibited some of its products at the Ligurian Ceramics exhibition in Rome organized by ENAPI (National Agency for Crafts and Small Businesses). In 1939 Ivos Pacetti reopened the collaboration with the factory, assuming its artistic direction and coordinating the production of over 300 ceramics, some of which were presented, in the same year, at the IX edition of the Mostra Mercato dell'Artigianato e delle Small Industrie of Florence and the the year following the VII Triennale di Milano. In 1942 "ILSA" transformed into a limited partnership whose major shareholders were Francesco Perotti and his brother Rinaldo. From the industrial-artistic union, in over twenty years of production, products emerge from the "ILSA" furnaces which, although equipped with elegant decorations and innovative shapes, manage, even in the most current production, to solve the commercial needs of the large tableware market kitchen. The factory was forced to close in the last years of the Second World War and was re-founded in 1948, in Carcare, by the Perotti brothers. At the end of the war the factory, which returned to being a cooperative under the name "Ilsa", specialized in the production of wall tiles. Between the beginning of the 1950s and the end of the 1960s, numerous important artists worked at the company's ovens, including: Agenore Fabbri, Mario Rossello and Franco Garelli, . Between 1960 and 1970 it employed around 200 people including workers and employees, also making use of the collaboration of numerous artists including Roberto Crippa, Lucio Fontana, and Emilio Scanavino. In 1963 the factory participated in the creation of the paving of Lungomare degli Artisti in Albissola Marina.
