A marble goddess stands against a night sky scattered with sparks, and across her body run thin white diagonal lines, edge to edge, like rain drawn with a ruler. The lines are the product. This is an advertisement for thread.
The name «Bemberg» runs across the top in a flowing script laid over a monumental letter B; a fluted column occupies the right edge, and at its foot a living woman in a long gown mirrors the statue above her — antiquity supplying the prestige, the modern wearer supplying the point. On the left, in outlined capitals, the campaign slogan: «AUTARCHIA TESSILE», textile self-sufficiency. The copy below is pure institutional varnish: in the production of national textiles and in the field of their use, Bemberg «brings to the service of the country a luminous tradition and a distinguished prestige».
Cupro: silk from cellulose
Bemberg began as J.P. Bemberg AG, a German firm that from 1911 held a dominant position worldwide in one particular technology: cellulose fibre spun by the cuprammonium process — cupro, sold as an artificial silk. The Italian Bemberg company worked the same process, and in the sanctions years that technical pedigree became a patriotic argument: a silk-like fibre that owed nothing to imported silk or cotton fitted the autarky programme exactly, which is why a German-born process could be advertised under the banner of Italian textile self-sufficiency without anyone blinking. The diagonal threads crossing the statue are the drawing’s only concession to the factory floor: everything else is column, marble and night.
Without a signature
The collector who owns the sheet reads a signature along the shadow edge at the right and gives the design to the illustrator Ugo Russo; on our scan the marks there do not resolve into letters, and we have found no independent record tying the name to this sheet, so it is published here without an author. At the foot, below the column, sits the small circular agency monogram found across the whole series — read by the collector as the mark of the Milanese concessionaire IGAP, likewise unconfirmed. The sheet is undated; the «autarchia tessile» slogan places it in the campaign of the late 1930s.
About this image. The work is still protected by copyright: under Italian law (L. 633/1941) rights run for 70 years from the death of the author. Since the author has not been identified, that term cannot be considered expired, and the image is treated as fully protected. It is reproduced here for documentation, study and critical purposes only, under Art. 70 of L. 633/1941 and the fair-use provision of 17 U.S.C. §107. The scan was made by the collector from his own copy of the sheet, part of the period material he keeps in a private archive: owning the physical sheet is not the same as holding the rights to the work. The image is not offered for sale, no reproduction rights are granted, and any request concerning the work should be addressed to the rights holders. Cultural Heritage Online publishes this material to document it, with no celebratory intent; see our terms and the DMCA contact published there.
Sources
- Bemberg — the German origin of the firm and its dominant position in cuprammonium (cupro) fibre from 1911
- The sheet itself, for the slogan, the copy and the marks.
