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Thanks to our Italian readers, we have quite a few images of Italian families from the 1920s. We begin to see more and more modern clothing, but we still see some traditional styles, mostly with older people the more isolated areas such as Sardinia and Sicily. Here head scarves for the women were also still common. Almost all the children are wearing modern styles, although as a result of continuing high levels of poverty, many children are not well dressed. We even see poorly dressed families in these portraits, mostly at vert basic studios. We see images of very well dresses families with modern styles. Some of the older women still wear very long dresses. We see a range of suit jackers, including collar buttoning jacketas and lapel jackets. The collar-buttoning jackets are most common in the traditional areas. Most boy are wearing short pants, although we still see some knee pants in the early 20s. Strap shoes are popular for formal dress. Sandals are becoming popular with boys. Poor boys are still mostly barefoot.
Camillio Olivetti was a wealthy Italian industrialist of Jewish origins. While we have little information on his Olivetti's childhood, we do have some information on his family. Camillo Olivetti married Luisa Revel. She was the daughter of the Pastor of the Reformed Church of Ivrea. In late years of his life, Camillo joined the Unitarian Church.They had six children. In the back row of the portrait here we can see Massimo, Laura, Elena and Adriano. Adriano studied in the United States. In the front row are Dino and Silvia. Dino, the younger boy was born in 1912. He is weating an open-necked shirt with short trousers and open-toe sandals. This is an example of summer clothing of a wealthy boy. At the time open-toe sandals are not so common as they became later. Working class children wore shoes or clogs or they went barefoot.
This family portrait was taken in Carini, a big village near Palermo, Sicily. It is undated, but we would guess was taken during the 1920s. We can see the father and the mother with their seven children. In the center of the photo there is the father with two children. The mother is standing in the second row. This arrangement graphically shows the father's role in the patriarchal Italian family at the time.
Here we see an unidentified family also in the Sardinina village of Ulassai in 1920. The boys wear jackets that buttoned at the collar and did not have lapels. This style was no longer fashionable but had been worn before World War I. There are two younger children wearing skirts and petticoats. We do not know if they were boys or girls. Two young women, wear identical outfits with head scarves. One of the women is surely the mother. I'm not sure who the other woman is.
Here is a photograoh of the Soardi family, a fisherman family on Iseo Lake in North Italy, near Trento. The picture was taken in 1920. They wear their daily clothing and the three younger children are barefoot. The Iseo Lake is in Alpi Mountains (where winter is enough cold) and I think that children owned best clothing then that here we can see and also footwear, but they don't wear in this photo. That is uncommon because usually children wear the best clothing in a family portrait. In that time nevertheless low condition children go often barefoot in warm weather and more fisherman children.
Here is a portrait of an unidentified brother and sister taken in 1924. They are dressed up for the portrait, but not in particularly forml clothing. It is is an interesting companion photo as we have a portrit of this same boy in his First Communion outfit. The portait was taken somewhere in Italy, but we do not know just where. The boy seems to be about a year or two younger than the boy who was dressed
for communion, but he wears similar clothing. Here he seems to be about 8 or 9 years old (not 10 as in the first communion portrait).
This Italian family portrait photo was taken in Solarussa, central Sardinia (figure 1). It is undated, but may have been taken in the 1920s, perhaps even the 1930. We can see the parents and at leas two daughters. We are not sure if the baby is a boy or girl. Father's headwear is interesting. We are not sure what it was called. An Italian reader tells us, "It was the traditional Sardinian cap. Somewhere there was something similar, but not the same." We believe we have seen this style in medieval paintings, but don't know much about it. It seems tohzve been called a chaperon--although they were sone in many different styles. Mother and the daughters wear head sacrves. This long established convention disappeared very quickly after World War II. The baby wears a bonnet. We are not sure why. The giels are basically dressed like mother in old fashioned jackets, blouses and skirts. They all seem to be barefoot. We are not sure about mother.
Bisceglie is a coastal town 20 mi from Bari in southern Italy. Here we have a studio photo portrait of three siblings taken in Bisceglie in the 1920s. We assume that they belong to a middle class family. The children look to be about 1-7 yea5rs old. The older boy wears a white sailor suit. The girl has a doll. Note that she is wearing earrings. Until recent times in southern Italy it was common for even very young girls to have ear rings--even infants. The baby is unclothed. That was quite common. The idea was to show how healthy he was. There is also the family pet, a pert little pooch.
The Dufour are an entrepreneurial family from Genoa. The family originated in France and settled in Turin during the French Revolution. We are not sure why. Lorenzo Dufour founded a sugar factory in Genoa (1830). The family relocated there. They pursued a range of varied economic activities in different commercial sectors amd made a great deal of mony. Nowadays in Italy they are mainly known for their candies and jams. We have found photos taken in Varazze, close to Genoa, where the family had a summer mansion, probany during the 1920s. We see images of the family walking in the hills to a place called Le Faje. We don't know the names of the man and children, probably girls, in the photo nor when it was taken, probanly in the 1920s. Unusually for a wealthy family at the gime, the girls are walking in simple summer frocks and bare feet.
Alberto Quadri was born in Marzabotto, near Bologna, in the 1880s. In the late 1890s his family emigrated to Brazil. They worked in the fields and could save some money. After the First World War they went back to Italy and bought a little farm in the municipality of Vergato, also near Bologna. However Alberto, already married, remained in Brazil. He had the concession of the land for a farm in the State of Minas Gerais. We can assume that his business was good, because in 1927 the whole family took a vacation to Italy to visit the relatives in Vergato and in Sasso, another village near Bologna, the birth place of Cleonice Sandri, Alberto's wife. The photo was taken in Vergato during this vacation. We can see Alberto Quadri and Clenice Sandri, their twelve children and two Alberto's sisters. Cleonice was pregnant and gave birth during the vacation time. She died a few days later. Alberto took the famoly back to Brazil. We know that Alberto remarried and had three children by the second wife.
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