NATO Fornasetti Insulator
from Margaret Oveson, North Grafton, MA

We received this reply in answer to our cry for help to identify Gregg Gibb's insulator in the May 1969 issue, page 21. Our sincere thanks to you, Margaret. May we continue to learn from each other.

I have a sister to the Italian ceramic paperweight shown in the May issue; same size and shape, but from Fornasetti-Milano and with trade mark of a hand holding a paint brush.

In place of the "Happy 1958" mine has in red-brown lettering, "FOR YOUR TELEPHONE MESSAGES." As this lettering is smaller, there is a band of gold above it, as well as the wide band in the groove. On the saddle-groove top (pencil-holder), done in black on the white ceramic is the type of four-pointed star used on old maps with N, E, S, W--only this has N A T O; the reason develops from the information on the skirt which has in four columns of red-brown lettering:
A as in Alfa
B as in Bravo
C as in Charlie, etc.
and on through the alphabet, which ends with "Alphabet Officially Adopted by NATO."

Mine is not painted; best guess is that the design and lettering were applied as a decal and fired on with an overglaze.

The fact that the two are basically identical, but were turned out by two different concerns in Milan, leads me to believe that the blanks were manufactured in quantity and sold to various novelty ceramics producers who then decorated them as they chose for the souvenir export trade.

Sorry I have no authentic information on this; all the above is just venturesome guessing, but hope it will help to know there's more than one of these "whatizzits."