A Digital Heritage for the Community:
the Pirelli Historical Archive online
For the past ten years, the Pirelli Foundation in the Milano Bicocca district has been home to a wealth of knowledge and understanding that is open every day to the community, to scholars, and to undergraduates, for it is also available online. This is the Pirelli Group’s Historical Archive, which can also be consulted on the fondazionepirelli.org website: a gateway to the over three kilometres of documents in the Pirelli archive. A journey of discovery that often meets teaching or research requirements, or that is embarked upon simply out of curiosity or to have an overall view of the company’s almost one-hundred-and-fifty-year history.
The area of the site dedicated to the Archive is the first step towards a global vision of an extraordinary legacy of documents, photographs, drawings, and films that has been declared a Cultural Heritage by the Italian State. This section of the site is constantly updated by the analysis and digitisation of new documents, such as the collection entitled “Documents for the History of Pirelli Industries“, which was compiled in 1942 and 1943 to celebrate the company’s seventieth anniversary: from the Deed of Incorporation of 1872 to photos of factory interiors in the 1920s, from the General Provisions through to company patents, the materials provide a complete overview of the ebb and flow of Italian and international industrial history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The photographic collection, on the other hand, consists of hundreds of thousands of items, including negatives on plate and film, prints, and slides made or commissioned by the Advertising and Communication department since the 1910s. There are photos of products, factories, trade fairs and exhibitions, company events, the vehicles for which the tyres were made (cars, motorcycles, bicycles, planes, and agricultural machines) and motor-racing competitions using Pirelli tyres. Reports on motor races, cycling races and shots of everyday life with people cycling and of fashion and exhibitions, and an enormous wealth of materials on the construction of the Pirelli Tower are all available online. The site also contains hundreds of original studies, sketches and drawings commissioned from famous artists, illustrators, and designers from the 1910s to the 1960s for advertisements, to celebrate the objectives attained by the company and to illustrate Pirelli magazine. Over the coming months, thousands of printed advertisements produced mainly from the 1950s to the 1970s will be added to these original drawings, with posters, catalogues, folders and window displays.
Hundreds of movies on film and magnetic tape made from the early twentieth century to the end of the 1990s are already online: from the film of King Victor Emmanuel III at Bicocca by Luca Comerio, one of the great Italian directors of silent films, to cinema advertisements and Carosello television commercials by the great masters of Italian animation, such as the brothers Pagot and Gavioli, through to the latest ads on television.
There is also a vast amount of publishing materials that has been produced by Pirelli over the years, with the periodical Vado e Torno and Pirelli magazine already online. The latter offers unique insight into corporate culture in the late twentieth century. Published from 1948 to 1972, generally bimonthly, and on regular sale at newsstands, Pirelli magazine was launched with the declared aim of combining technical-scientific and liberal culture. Issues concerning industrial production, science, and technology appeared alongside others that ranged from art to architecture, sociology, and economics, through to urban planning and literature. To assist the reader, the magazine has been divided into its original sections, also in its online version. Today, Pirelli’s commitment in the world of publishing continues with Fatti e Notizie and with World, an English-language publication with texts by great international authors. In future, these too will be available in digital format on Fondazionepirelli.org. Stay tuned!
For the past ten years, the Pirelli Foundation in the Milano Bicocca district has been home to a wealth of knowledge and understanding that is open every day to the community, to scholars, and to undergraduates, for it is also available online. This is the Pirelli Group’s Historical Archive, which can also be consulted on the fondazionepirelli.org website: a gateway to the over three kilometres of documents in the Pirelli archive. A journey of discovery that often meets teaching or research requirements, or that is embarked upon simply out of curiosity or to have an overall view of the company’s almost one-hundred-and-fifty-year history.
The area of the site dedicated to the Archive is the first step towards a global vision of an extraordinary legacy of documents, photographs, drawings, and films that has been declared a Cultural Heritage by the Italian State. This section of the site is constantly updated by the analysis and digitisation of new documents, such as the collection entitled “Documents for the History of Pirelli Industries“, which was compiled in 1942 and 1943 to celebrate the company’s seventieth anniversary: from the Deed of Incorporation of 1872 to photos of factory interiors in the 1920s, from the General Provisions through to company patents, the materials provide a complete overview of the ebb and flow of Italian and international industrial history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The photographic collection, on the other hand, consists of hundreds of thousands of items, including negatives on plate and film, prints, and slides made or commissioned by the Advertising and Communication department since the 1910s. There are photos of products, factories, trade fairs and exhibitions, company events, the vehicles for which the tyres were made (cars, motorcycles, bicycles, planes, and agricultural machines) and motor-racing competitions using Pirelli tyres. Reports on motor races, cycling races and shots of everyday life with people cycling and of fashion and exhibitions, and an enormous wealth of materials on the construction of the Pirelli Tower are all available online. The site also contains hundreds of original studies, sketches and drawings commissioned from famous artists, illustrators, and designers from the 1910s to the 1960s for advertisements, to celebrate the objectives attained by the company and to illustrate Pirelli magazine. Over the coming months, thousands of printed advertisements produced mainly from the 1950s to the 1970s will be added to these original drawings, with posters, catalogues, folders and window displays.
Hundreds of movies on film and magnetic tape made from the early twentieth century to the end of the 1990s are already online: from the film of King Victor Emmanuel III at Bicocca by Luca Comerio, one of the great Italian directors of silent films, to cinema advertisements and Carosello television commercials by the great masters of Italian animation, such as the brothers Pagot and Gavioli, through to the latest ads on television.
There is also a vast amount of publishing materials that has been produced by Pirelli over the years, with the periodical Vado e Torno and Pirelli magazine already online. The latter offers unique insight into corporate culture in the late twentieth century. Published from 1948 to 1972, generally bimonthly, and on regular sale at newsstands, Pirelli magazine was launched with the declared aim of combining technical-scientific and liberal culture. Issues concerning industrial production, science, and technology appeared alongside others that ranged from art to architecture, sociology, and economics, through to urban planning and literature. To assist the reader, the magazine has been divided into its original sections, also in its online version. Today, Pirelli’s commitment in the world of publishing continues with Fatti e Notizie and with World, an English-language publication with texts by great international authors. In future, these too will be available in digital format on Fondazionepirelli.org. Stay tuned!
