The first Italian philatelic magazine…are actually two!

Bruno Crevato-Selvaggi

Académie Européenne de PhilatélieAijp

In the 19th century, Livorno (Leghorn, in English)

was an important port on the coast of Tuscany, devoted to trading with several countries in the Western Mediterranean Sea. Hence, Livorno was a point of attraction for many people from different countries. A Spanish man, Placido Ramon de Torres, was one of them; he moved to Livorno years before and opened a stationery shop downtown. He was also a stamp collector, and he started to collecting stamps in his shop. His business was growing, and in 1873, July,

La posta mondiale(The World Post)

n. 1, July 1873

he founded the first Italian magazine devoted to stamps collecting, “La posta mondiale” (The world post).Every issue was 8pages, 17x24 centimetres, with text, no pictures.The life of our magazine was as long as twelve issues: at issue number 12(1874, July) the magazine was terminated.

1. Avviso = Notice

2. Avviso = Notice

In the slides you can see some of the 12 covers.

N. 3 and n. 4. Le poste vicereali egiziane, a technical note regarding the beginning of the modern postal system in Egypt and the first issues (as you remember, the first Egyptian stamps were in Italian).

5. Riforme postali = Postal reforms(new rules and rates of Italian postal service)

6. Cartoline – Lettere – francobolli= Post cards, letters, stamps

7. Utilità della collezione di francobolli =Usefulness of stamps collecting

12. Ai nostri abbonati =To our subscribers

In a precious book freshly published in Paris, baron Arthur Rothschild, a millionaire writing for fun (lucky him!), maintains the invention of stamps dates back to the Fronde period (1648).May be. Yet, let us doubt till we are shown more convincing evidence.

All articles were very basic, not of high level. Some points of interest in the inner pages.

Curious news: the “Club sociale pei collettori”that is a Club (in the English sense) for collectors.

Today we opened, in front of our stationery shop, a stylish room for meetings of male and female collectors. Pictures of old and new worldwide stamps, and portraits of collectors hang on the walls. On the tables, philatelic magazines of different countries are on display: Italy, United Kingdom, United States, Germany, The Netherlands, Russia, Denmark and so on. Therefore everybody can be delighted with philatelic news in their preferred language.

A curious lexical oddity. Now, in Italian “perforation” and “perforated” is dentellatura and dentellato (from “dente”, tooth). Our hero didn’t use the modern word for “dentellato” (perforated) but a strange word: “smerlato”. In my knowledge, he was the only writer that used this word, never recorded elsewhere. What does it mean? It is a kind of lacework: “ricamo a smerlo”. The English term is scallop. You can see this lacework in the picture, so as you can see it can remind the “teeth” of stamps.

No pictures in the pages, but in every issue one had a table with lithographic pictures of stamps, of course in only one colour.

In the next slides, you have some of these tables.

As you can understand, the main interest was not only stamps, but also postal cards, cancellations, watermarks, other post items and particularly different kind of stamps: revenue stamps, customs stamps, match stamps and so on, and particularly Municipal revenue stamps of different cities in the world.

In my knowledge, this was not of major interest to the collectors of that time, but a special interest of our hero.

You can see also his “current price” with prices of Municipal stamps.

P. De TorresCurrent Price of Municipal Revenue Stamps

The philatelic adventures of Placido de Torres didn’t stop here: in the same 1873, he published also a “Catalogo descrittivo di tutti i francobolli emessi dal 1840 al 1873 con la loro data di emissione, loro valore, colore e particolarità”, that is “Descriptive catalogue of all stamps issued from eighteen-forty to eighteen seventy three, with date of issue, their value, their colour and other characteristics”. I haven’t the cover, sorry! But the real founder and maybe owner of the magazine was not (or was not only) de Torres. The shadow man and the real merchant was a nobleman, the Count Cesare Giulio Bonasi, who preferred to stay hidden behind the merchant. After the end of his magazine, we have no news of de Torres. Instead, Count Bonasi published some “Current prices” of world stamps in the late years of the century and opened an antiques bookshop in Rome. This is the little story of the first Italian philatelic magazine…

XIX CenturyTrieste in the Austrian Empire

…but a second Italian “number one” exists, not in Italy but in another country

At the end of 197h century, the city of Trieste (as well as the entire Eastern border of Italy) was part of the Austrian Empire, and their inhabitants were Germans, Slovene and in the large majority Italians.

A very young Italian Jewish citizen, Teodoro Mayer, in 1875 (March, 23) founded a Philatelic magazine in Italian, the Corriere dei francobolli (Stamps Courier).

At that time he was fifteen (he was born in Triest in 1860)!

The magazine lived for 4 years.

In that years, the main political idea of Italians in Triest was “irredentism”, that is the aspiration to join Triest, Gorizia and Istria to Italy, and the fight against the Habsburg power.The young Mayer was irredentist too, and his political idea suggested to him to propose a big National organisation of collectors: but an “Italian” national organisation!

In one of the first issues he proposed an “Associazione nazionale timbrofila italiana” (National Italian association of philatelic collectors) with an editorial titled “Let’s get together, Italian collectors!”. Of course, that issue was censored by the Austrian authorities, and all copies were confiscated.

“Corriere dei francobolli” was the first philatelic magazine in Italian outside the Kingdom of Italy and maybe the first example of political censorship in a philatelic magazine! In 1881, Mayer, 21 years old, founded “Il Piccolo” (the small one) the main newspaper of Triest, existing still now.

The first Italian philatelic magazine…are actually two!

THANK YOUFOR YOUR ATTENTION

Bruno Crevato-SelvaggiAcadémie Européenne de Philatélie

Aijp