Foreign Insulators
by Marilyn Albers
Reprinted from "INSULATORS - Crown Jewels of the Wire", November 1981, page 4
Italian Ceramic Insulators -- Laverno, Italy
VERBANO
SOCIETA'
CERAMICA ITALIANA
(Italian Ceramics Society)
STABILIMENTO VERBANO
(Verbano
Plant)
LAVENO
(a town in Italy well known for ceramics)
So reads the cover of an
Italian insulator catalogue loaned to me by Ray Klingensmith at the National
Show in Herkimer, New York, in July, 1980. Just minutes later, at that same
show, I spotted a white ceramic insulator on Bill Bennett's sales table. It had
the logo of the Verbano plant on its crown in green ink and the numbers 9-61
stamped underneath it. I would assume these numbers refer to the date of
manufacture: September of 1961. The catalogue was not dated, so I don't know if
the plant is even still in existence, but at least we know it was, as late as
1961. It was really a thrill to find both the catalogue and the insulator at the
same time, because this logo was new to me, and there, miraculously was the
explanation -- but unfortunately all the words were in Italian!
"That's no
hill for a climber," I said to myself, and bought an inexpensive paperback
Italian dictionary. It didn't take long to discover that most of the words I
needed to know weren't even in it. So I called our next door neighbor, who was
born in Italy and lived there until she married a Texan. She has also taught
classes at the Berlitz School of Languages, but is now doing translations
privately for individuals and various firms here in Houston (7 cents a word!).
She agreed to loan me two Italian dictionaries she had. Together they made a
stack 7" thick! One was just a general unabridged dictionary, and the other
was one containing technical terms. The last one proved to be the most help --
something you may want to remember if you ever find yourself in the same
situation!
There was no way I was going to translate every single word in
that catalogue, nor would you be interested if I did. Also, I've only included
the drawings of insulators I felt you would enjoy seeing and/or collecting. Not
shown are strains, knobs, wall insulators, post insulators and
"support" (portanti) insulators for inside and outside use. Verbano
makes all of these, to be sure; but if all were pictured here in Crown
Jewels,
you wouldn't be able to pick the magazine up off your desk!
It was interesting
to me that a lot of the wording was done by hand and with beautiful lettering.
Also, I suspect that some of the catalogue pages were missing, since they were
in a loose leaf binder, and the insulator I found (and bought) at the show was
not even shown. But the logo stamped on the crown identifies it as one of their
products.
2-3/4" wide, 3-3/4" high
Following are reproductions of a
few of the catalogue sheets, which have been reduced forty per cent to fit these
pages.
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