The first Italian philatelic magazine

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The first Italian philatelic magazineare
actually two!

• Bruno Crevato-Selvaggi
• Académie Européenne de Philatélie
• Aijp

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In the 19th century, Livorno (Leghorn, in
English)
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was an important port on the coast of Tuscany,
devoted to trading with several countries in the
Western Mediterranean Sea. Hence, Livorno was a
point of attraction for many people from
different countries. A Spanish man, Placido Ramon
de Torres, was one of them he moved to Livorno
years before and opened a stationery shop
downtown. He was also a stamp collector, and he
started to collecting stamps in his shop. His
business was growing, and in 1873, July,
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he founded the first Italian magazine devoted to
stamps collecting, La posta mondiale (The world
post). Every issue was 8pages, 17x24 centimetres,
with text, no pictures. The life of our magazine
was as long as twelve issues at issue number
12(1874, July) the magazine was terminated.
La posta mondiale (The World Post) n. 1, July
1873
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1. Avviso Notice
In the slides you can see some of the 12 covers.
2. Avviso Notice
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N. 3 and n. 4. Le poste vicereali egiziane, a
technical note regarding the beginning of the
modern postal system in Egypt and the first
issues (as you remember, the first Egyptian
stamps were in Italian).
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5. Riforme postali Postal reforms (new rules
and rates of Italian postal service)
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6. Cartoline Lettere francobolli Post
cards, letters, stamps
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7. Utilità della collezione di francobolli
Usefulness of stamps collecting
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12. Ai nostri abbonati To our subscribers
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All articles were very basic, not of high level.
  Some points of interest in the inner pages.  

• In a precious book freshly published in Paris,
  baron Arthur Rothschild, a millionaire writing
  for fun (lucky him!), maintains the invention of
  stamps dates back to the Fronde period (1648).
• May be. Yet, let us doubt till we are shown more
  convincing evidence.

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• Curious news the Club sociale pei collettori
• that is a Club (in the English sense) for
  collectors.
• Today we opened, in front of our stationery shop,
  a stylish room for meetings of male and female
  collectors. Pictures of old and new worldwide
  stamps, and portraits of collectors hang on the
  walls. On the tables, philatelic magazines of
  different countries are on display Italy, United
  Kingdom, United States, Germany, The Netherlands,
  Russia, Denmark and so on. Therefore everybody
  can be delighted with philatelic news in their
  preferred language.

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A curious lexical oddity. Now, in Italian
perforation and perforated is dentellatura
and dentellato (from dente, tooth). Our hero
didnt use the modern word for dentellato
(perforated) but a strange word smerlato. In
my knowledge, he was the only writer that used
this word, never recorded elsewhere.   What does
it mean? It is a kind of lacework ricamo a
smerlo. The English term is scallop. You can
see this lacework in the picture, so as you can
see it can remind the teeth of stamps.
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No pictures in the pages, but in every issue one
had a table with lithographic pictures of stamps,
of course in only one colour.
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In the next slides, you have some of these tables.
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As you can understand, the main interest was not
only stamps, but also postal cards,
cancellations, watermarks, other post items and
particularly different kind of stamps revenue
stamps, customs stamps, match stamps and so on,
and particularly Municipal revenue stamps of
different cities in the world.
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In my knowledge, this was not of major interest
to the collectors of that time, but a special
interest of our hero. You can see also his
current price with prices of Municipal
stamps. P. De Torres Current Price of Municipal
Revenue Stamps
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The philatelic adventures of Placido de Torres
didnt stop here in the same 1873, he published
also a Catalogo descrittivo di tutti i
francobolli emessi dal 1840 al 1873 con la loro
data di emissione, loro valore, colore e
particolarità, that is Descriptive catalogue of
all stamps issued from eighteen-forty to eighteen
seventy three, with date of issue, their value,
their colour and other characteristics. I
havent the cover, sorry!   But the real founder
and maybe owner of the magazine was not (or was
not only) de Torres. The shadow man and the real
merchant was a nobleman, the Count Cesare Giulio
Bonasi, who preferred to stay hidden behind the
merchant.   After the end of his magazine, we
have no news of de Torres. Instead, Count Bonasi
published some Current prices of world stamps
in the late years of the century and opened an
antiques bookshop in Rome.   This is the little
story of the first Italian philatelic magazine
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XIX Century Trieste in the Austrian Empire
but a second Italian number one exists, not in
Italy but in another country
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At the end of 197h century, the city of Trieste
(as well as the entire Eastern border of Italy)
was part of the Austrian Empire, and their
inhabitants were Germans, Slovene and in the
large majority Italians.
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A very young Italian Jewish citizen, Teodoro
Mayer, in 1875 (March, 23) founded a Philatelic
magazine in Italian, the Corriere dei
francobolli (Stamps Courier). At that time he
was fifteen (he was born in Triest in
1860)! The magazine lived for 4 years.
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In that years, the main political idea of
Italians in Triest was irredentism, that is the
aspiration to join Triest, Gorizia and Istria to
Italy, and the fight against the Habsburg
power. The young Mayer was irredentist too, and
his political idea suggested to him to propose a
big National organisation of collectors but an
Italian national organisation! In one of the
first issues he proposed an Associazione
nazionale timbrofila italiana (National Italian
association of philatelic collectors) with an
editorial titled Lets get together, Italian
collectors!. Of course, that issue was censored
by the Austrian authorities, and all copies were
confiscated. Corriere dei francobolli was the
first philatelic magazine in Italian outside the
Kingdom of Italy and maybe the first example of
political censorship in a philatelic
magazine!   In 1881, Mayer, 21 years old, founded
Il Piccolo (the small one) the main newspaper
of Triest, existing still now.
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The first Italian philatelic magazineare
actually two!THANK YOUFOR YOUR ATTENTION

• Bruno Crevato-Selvaggi
• Académie Européenne de Philatélie
• Aijp