Frameteller - My New Favorite Website

The Milanese and Venetian schools of classic builders are fairly well known. You have Gloria, who begat Galmozzi and Masi and Colnago who begat Rossin and on and on. Venetian brands are fairly well known as well, even if their lineage is a bit murkier. A visit to Turin and my eyes were opened to that incredibly talented school, which is known locally but not as well worldwide, what with folks like Ernesto and Ugo hogging the limelight still to this day.

After my visit to Emilia Romagna's Somec, a favorite brand from my teenage years, my eyes were opened to yet another innovative classic Italian school of builders. I recently found frameteller.it, where regional pride has led to an incredible archive of this region's highly innovative and influential builders. Here, Manuel Dall’Olio has curated stories, innovations, publications and more, all with a narrow focus on the output from Emilia Romagna.

Known to serious collectors, but still fairly hidden from the "easy" collectors, names like Marastoni, Somec and Rauler rise to the top fairly quickly; however, the important contributions of Vicini and Dosi (two builders of Marco Pantani's early bikes) lead down the rabbit hole until you find a Paletti, an Ortelli and all of a sudden you're reading a long complete history of Neri e Renzo and then you find your saved eBay searches has doubled!

It is thanks to this site that I now know the creator of the greatest 90's paint jobs... Mario Martini. The amazing stars, neon argyles and fades created by Martini graced the bikes from this region and I now know the story behind it thanks to frameteller.

The list of innovations and patents to come from this region is in itself worth a visit. Too long to list here, but incredibly important are such items as internal cables, brazed on bottle mounts, shaped steel tubing, and even rollers for training!

One common thread from E-R to Milan to Turin to the Veneto is that the artisan construct remains: local "houses" doing business to finish a hand made work of art, with little regard to systemization beyond the idea that you've worked with this chroming house or frame painter for years. It's something worthy of many business theses and a way of doing business that still exists in il bel paese. But this is also lost to many new world collectors who can't wrap their heads around the idea that the hard rules of production are thrown out the window when working in this manner. Yes, this builder used this certain lugset for this period - until he ran out, lost interest, found something new or whatever... but then eight years later found the last box of them and used them again. These are the mysteries that are best appreciated by accepting and understanding the artisan environment.

A tip of the hat to Manuel, who has researched and listed 340 historic brands to emerge from this region since the 1920's. His completeness and dedication to the project sets the standard for the archiving of and lifting the covers off of a very narrow but important focus.

To translate the site into english, you can start at the Patelli link here and navigate around. Note that some of the flash pages won't translate in this manner, but most articles will. Also, be sure to enjoy the awesome photos and publication archive.

Making Alternate Plans for L'Eroica

If we're friends on Facebook, you've likely seen the big news of the summer... twins! Finally! Our lives changed for good on July 2 this year.

That said (seems like that's becoming a verbal crutch as I've been writing it a lot lately!), I'm not going to make the trip to Tuscany in a month's time. Turns out the points I have won't cover my ticket, as I put off booking it until too late. On top of that, these two are more than a handful, so I'm making new plans... more on that soon.

Galmozzi Restoration!

The 1950 Galmozzi with Cambio Corsa is ready for its maiden voyage finally! It was quite a long process, like all restorations, but well worth it. I've added a couple more details since then, namely the period-correct Columbus decal and the non-period-correct black bar tape with red stitching!

The man towards the end is Angelo Galmozzi, son of Francesco (a co-founder of Gloria and considered one of the best Italian framebuilders of the early days), who took the reigns from his father until finally closing the company in the mid-70's. He is full of stories from "back in the day" and even more from BEFORE "back in the day". He's quite the Italian historian, and is quick to let his political ideas seep into and eventually become major players in his recounting of growing up in Italy. He was impressed with the bike, and even more so by the Galmozzi t-shirt I was sporting under my Lambo sweatshirt! I guess I need to get another one on order!

A Gloria Christmas, part 2

So my old bike collecting bug has gotten a little out of control in just one year's time. However, when I met Paolo (of Biciclette e Decadence fame) and found out about a friend of his who might consider selling what is my Holy Grail bike, I couldn't pass up. The Gloria Garibaldina is considered by many to be the ultimate Italian vintage bike to own. There were quite a few made, as Gloria was a goliath company until about 1960, but few survived in good, original condition (not that this one is totally original, far from it).

Gloria developed a way to pump out these fine frames in a large number for the time. One way of doing so was to stamp the head tube and distinct flower-shaped 'lugs' from a sheet, roll it and then weld the seam. If you pull the fork out and look inside, you'll see that the flower 'lugs' are in fact recessed from the stamping process! That means that the flower lugs this bike is famous for are not even really lugs! Add to it that many of the components were branded with "Gloria", the unique rear dropouts, and the nickel-plated 'lugs' and you end up with a beautiful representation of the highest bicycle technology of the day.

I'm only going to post this one photo for now, as I don't want anyone else to find it and outbid me! I hope to pick it up on the way home from Puglia. It's safe to say that my collecting is officially over because to me, it doesn't get much better than this!

PS - an update on Mrs. Masini's Gloria... the Maasland told me last night that the grips are made of ox horn!

A Gloria Christmas... part 1

Merry Christmas to all, first off! You may notice some ongoing changes to the layout of the blog - I'm done with Disqus. It basically led to zero comments this year, so it's back to Google's stock comment system. I'll be tweaking over the next few days... but let's talk Christmas!

We finally got some snow to stick here in Basel yesterday. It's been coming down in tiny little flakes for the past day and a half, so it's a white one here.

I've been holding out on posting this Gloria ladie's city bike until after I showed it to the Mrs. on Christmas day. It was promised to be done by my restorer, but he's Italian... sooo. Anyway, I can't wait to see it. We'll be in the area on Monday on our way to Puglia for New Year's. Note the internal rod brakes... very cool.