Melandri-focaccia Biography
In 1921 Pietro Melandri, after his experience with Paolo Zoli in the "Faience" ceramic factory in Faenza, met the Ravenna industrialist Umberto Focaccia and the following year they purchased the laboratories of the former "Minardi" factory, where together they founded the ceramic factory artistic "Melandri-Focaccia". They presented their creations at the Monza Biennials of 1923 and 1925. Since 1923 the factory has maintained continuous relationships with the architect Giò Ponti, at the time artistic director of "Richard-Ginori". Also in 1925 the company was present at the Expo des Arts Decoratives in Paris. Starting from the mid-1920s, the architect Giovanni Guerrini collaborated with the manufacturer as a designer. In 1930 the company, whose production had now taken on a decidedly deco flavour, participated in the Triennale of Decorative Arts in Monza, enjoying great critical and public success and from the same year the collaboration with Ponti intensified and resulted in a series of commissions for the creation of furnishing elements. In 1931, due to financial difficulties, Focaccia was forced to sell the ceramic factory building and dissolve the company. In 1932, after trying in vain to convince the buyer of the building, Luigi Marabini, to keep the ceramic manufacturing business active, Melandri obtained from the new owner the use of some rooms where he set up his art studio. The pieces of the manufacture are generally marked with a goshawk enclosed inside a circle on the sides of which appear the initials M and F and the writing Faenza. Over the years, some of the greatest ceramists of the time collaborated with the factory, such as Angelo Ungania, Francesco Nonni, Domenico Baccarini, Arturo Martini and Enrico Mazzolani, who produced models then made by Melandri.
