Philately: fabric stamps, luxury brands stamps, artistic and historical stamps of the past.

Spending some days in your own house, the house where you grew old and your family still lives in, always gives you nice surprise and souvenirs from the past. While tidying up one of the room, where all the books are stored, that I found the interesting stamps I’m going to show.

Some are made of fabric (never seen before!) and some seem to be part of a fashion collection, because their illustrations are about specific luxury brands. Then, there is an ‘artistic’ one, that represents a painting by Giorgio Vasari and an ‘historical’ one that shows the boundaries between the Republic of San Marino and Italy.

Here you are the little pieces to collect:

Fabric stamps and luxury brand stamps

On the top there are luxury brand stamps: Krizia, Dolce & Gabbana, Ferrè, Giorgio Armani, Laura Biagiotti and Prada. On the bottom you can see the stamps made of fabric and they were made to celebrate the art of crochet.

Here you are the second tranche: the first stamp represents a painting by Giorgio Vasari

painting by Giorgio Vasari in a stamp

Also in this picture you can see the Vasari’s one and another stamp about ‘Tintarella di luna‘, which is an old Italian song sung by one of the most popular Italian singer, Mina is her name.'Tintarella di luna' e Vasari stamps

the last one is about the representation of Italian state. In details, the division between Italy and Republic of San Marino:

Italy and Republic of San MarinoThat’s it for now, see you at next discovery 😉

It’s not a bag!

What I would like to share with you this time, it’s my very enthusiastic discover of last night, in one of the room of my house where I would never expect to find this thing.

As written in the title, when I was in front of it, I totally thought it was a vintage bag, maybe one of the bag of my grandma..or one of my mum’s adolescence. But I was wrong.

Actually, you can have this impression just at first sight, because after some seconds you can realize what is it…

old vintage camera openA very old camera, the real vintage mood 🙂 I think it was of my grandpa, and it was completely lost in the frippery of that room. I was completely surprised to find it and imagine its story.

Here you are one more picture: 2014-12-27 03.00.03

et voilà: ‘Alfa‘ seems to be the brand of this camera (never heard about it, but I’ll start my research asap), model should be Click II – type Achromat 186 (or maybe not?!)
old vintage camera 2

Now you can understand why I firstly thought it was a little bag from the past –  its case is totally made by brown leather and it’s also vintage model – no doutbs..

Anyway, if you know more about this camera history – for example, when it was produced? in which year ? (I also think it must be used with a sort of base, because there’s a little screw on one side, don’t hesitate to write me!

Colorful breakfast: Macarons or Macaral?

I took some pictures, they’re very colorful and bright, looking so happy. They’re about this new trend of ‘Macarons‘, something I thought was produced in France. I’m speaking – writing?! 🙂 – by using the past tense, because, in fact, some days ago I discovered something different. There was this old lady, who was working in one of the most colorful and modern cake design/pastry of Florence – Rinaldini its the name – and she told me that their origins are Italian, they’re part of the Made-in-Italy-history.

In fact, by looking at the following pictures, you will see that they’re called ‘Macaral‘ in order to be distinguished from the universal trend of nowadays. I think that Ladurée brand is playing a very essential role in the diffusion of those biscuits all around the world, and it’s also helping to spread the conviction that macarons are from France, even if it’s not true.

Macaral - Rinaldini - Florence

Anyway, wherever they’re from, it seems you can’t avoid to have 2, 3, 4, 5 (…) Macaral at least once in your life, for breakfast or a break in the afternoon..

Rinaldini pastry - Macaral in Florence

And if when you are in front of those colorful infinite rows, you have such difficulties to choose the best flavors, just don’t worry, it’s normal! You’ll be displayed all the possible flavors of the world…violette, strawberry, pistachos, licorice, chocolate, coffee and many, many others.

If you want a tip: just choose by the color 🙂

‘Dolci’: sweets in Naples, a total delight.

Last weekend I was i Naples, I got fat in just 3 days 🙂

I didn’t want to, but it was impossible to avoid those wonderful windows where you could stare at all those sweets. So utopian to not eat everything there, and here you are the explanation: ‘sfogliatelle’, ‘baba’ in the background and ‘struffoli’, the typical sweets for Xmas time.

sweets in Naples

And this was the wonderful bakery, or better a pastry shop, that draws the attention of everybody: this is Leopoldo, on of the most popular bakery of Naples. And now it’s becoming even more popular thanks to the addition of the ‘gelateria’ corner. Now you can have the pastry on the right (by Leopoldo) and ice creams on the left (by Casa Infante): a total delight.

DOLCI, Leopoldo in Naples

And finally, here you are one the wall that drew my attention, a black and white picture of the past:
delights of the past

Delights of the past, the same as in the present.

Fendi QuTweets for Christmas 2014, nice marketing operation

Here you are what happened. I’m gonna tell you about a cross-media experience I’ve just had while exploring Fendi world.

I decided to spend some days in Rome, it was too long I didn’t see the magic city, and even more time I didn’t have a walk in the city centre, near Via del Tritone, Via del Corso, too much time I didn’t get nervous by walking into the crowd of Rome.

Well, I was there for the perfect day, not only sunny, but also in one of the last weekend before Christmas, when all the people start to buy Xmas gifts. Well.

While I was walking, I got to Fendi and stopped in front of the most lively decoration I’ve seen in these days. I’ve always loved its way to communicate because generally its not to standard, and thinking that a luxury brand likes to enjoy the colors – as I’m going to show right now. Let’s discover little by little Fendi decorations for Christmas 2014:

2014-12-07 14.44.53

They’re not penguins 🙂 but just little colorful birds that look like very social and happy.

And here you are one more picture:

Xmas tree by Fendi

Yes, there are a lot of birds all around a giant Xmas tree, Fendi Xmas tree.

And here you are another view of Fendi building (and store):Fendi  - Rome

Firstly, I thought about this weird decoration, by thinking ‘How much social is it?!’..I was looking at all these little tweety birds among the bright bags which decorated the main wall of the building. Too weird, but happy and colorful, contrary to the rest of the conventional bright Xmas lights.

Once I was back home, I wanna look at Fendi website, let’s see the actual bags I’ve seen hunging on the building…let’s see this new collection and what it’s about.

And here you are what I read: ‘Fendi QuTweets’. I found again those Fendi-style birds, and also a nice video showing them flying all around the new bags, eating accessories and jewels.. nice Xmas operation: from the streets to the web. Maybe now it’s time to go the shop, isn’t it 😀 ?

Look at Fendi QuTweets video here.

Video about an Italian Radio: Radio Kiss Kiss

Just some words about this post: in the video, they talk about this new phenomenon of Cloud.
Actually it’s one of the most important Italian radio, Radio Kiss Kiss, based in South of Italy, Naples.
Actually, also the more ‘traditional’ channel of communication (that is not traditional anymore), has to compare with the new kind of infrastructure, the Cloud. In fact, radio speakers and managers talk about this moment of transition: how the radio is evolving and decides to base its business on cloud.

The language of the video is Italian, enjoy the video!

Modern Arts, black&white sequence of pictures: find the difference!

Again, you just need to get lost in your city for a while,
to find something very cool,
in an usual gallery,
a place that looks like an old track, a bottleneck.
Here’s the picture N.1 – God:

N.1 modern art picture

Here’s the picture N.2 – Love:

N.2 modern art picture

and N.3 – Flower:

N.3 modern art picture

and here you are N.4 – Matchstick:

Black&white Picture 1

Oh well, there’s one last picture I wanna show you, by Mr/Mrs K.
It was not part of the sequence, but was not so far from them…maybe they’re related:

Modern art on the wall

Enjoy them and share with me what they mean for you?

Bye!

Nightlife: those scenes you can see just in those hours

Nightlife, some times I think that nights should last longer. When you don’t have any plans for the night and then suddenly some friends call you to go out and see what to do together, those are the best moments ever. It always happened to come across some scenes that you can only see by chance, if you’re lucky enough.

Here’s what I came across some nights ago, while going towards the poshest street of Florence, maybe of Europe..because of its historical importance and the value of the brands that are located in its shops. Pay attention, you won’t be shown what you supposed to be shown 🙂
Via Antinori - Florence

ironing board

You know, we exactly are in Via Antinori,
and ‘Antinori’ it’s the name of one of the most important family in the history of this city. And it’s exactly the corner that leads you to Via Tornabuoni, the poshest street I was referring to before. So why an orange ironing board is there?!

Hence, a not very great scene.And that’s not all! The night it’s not finished yet…
We arrived in Santa Croce area..et voilà!Another weird wall appears to us:
Via de Garibaldi - FlorenceSpermatozoa? Well, I don’t think they’re tadpoles..
but there on the wall? What’s their meaning? The green tag at the bottom right said ‘URBAN’, yes, a urban work of art, but I really don’t know what could it mean, and if you know, please help me to understand 🙂