Original Photography from Innocenti Lambretta Factory in Milan #1

Following my post from the Spanish Lambretta / Serveta factory in Eibar, (here) I’ve been sent a ton of fantastic imagery from my online pal Darrin Slack – so much that they will be providing the majority of the posts for the forseeable future – my only issue is finding enough hours in the day to post them! Darrin is a self-admitted ‘bloody bloohound’ when it comes to anything Lambretta – and has scoured the internet to find these images – which kinda what I’ve been doing for to find content for this blog – but Darrin is far better at it than I am! So, all this stuff is out there on the internet already, but it’s nice for us Lambretta fans to have everything in one place eh? Hopefully this blog becomes a bit of a resource for anybody interested in Lambretta history.

Image Source: I will endeavour to post links to the sites where these images originally featured – and credit any original photographers etc. These images appear to originally come from the Fondazione ISEC Flickr account. The Fondazione ISEC was formed in 1973 for the purpose of collecting, conserving and enhancing sources of the history of the Italian Resistance movement and the labour movement. Over time, Fondazione ISEC has become a national reference point for whoever is interested in events concerning the political, economic and social history of contemporary Italy. They have appeared on various sites, and Pinterest accounts around the internet… hopefully posting them here is another way of preserving and publicising these great images. The Fondazione ISEC site is here: https://www.fondazioneisec.it/

Plenty more to come!
These shots are just the first of many, not only of the Lambretta factory, but also Lambretta trade shows, and various rarely seen publicity shots, as well as images of various Lambretta prototypes etc. Stay tuned for more of this good stuff! Thanks again to Darrin for sourcing and supplying me the images.

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A scooter with a fringe on top

I can’t seem to get the video to embed from the Britsih Pathé site, but it’s worth clicking through to see the clip. A Great bit of social history from the nifty fifties… a Series I / tent combo. Ideal for rallies, and “so simple even a woman can put it up” Another one found via ScooterDiva. And if a tent is a bit downmarket for you, check out this link for the next level of scooter camping comfort.

American girl in Italy, 1950’s

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When I’m not riding a Lambretta, I’m either at home with the wife and kids, (usually doing homework), or at work being a graphic designer. One of the design blogs I visit, Design You Can Trust, recently featured some wonderful photography by an american photojouranlist Ruth Orkin. 

A lot of her most arresting images come from the ’50s and ’60s, and there’s a lot of New York scenes, celebraties and musicians. Fabulous stuff, if you’re interested there’s a great online archive here. The image that caught my eye though was “American girl in Italy”, initially because of the rather cool couple of gents, astride a Model D. I thought, what a great image… how cool are all the guys in the image, so well dressed… and then you see the girls face. She’s obviously not happy with all the attention she’s getting. Looks pretty scared in fact. Maybe the good old days weren’t quite as rosy as we like to think of them.

EDIT/UPDATE: I’ve just found out that this is an iconic image, that nearly everybody in the world had seen! It’s even referenced on the Lambretta Wikipedia page. Oh well!

I do love old pics of scooters though, even better when the scooters are quite incedental to the image. If you’ve got any old Lambretta shots, I’d love to see them.