Companies

Ardinghi, Isola & Comp. Limitada

Since: 1910
Until: 1929
Activities: Type founding

According to Aragão (2016: 88-89), Italian inmigrant Affonso Ardinghi’s type foundry would have started its activities in 1910, under the name Fundição de Typos de A. Ardinghi & Companhia, and four years later it would have been renamed Fundição de Typos Ardinghi & Schneck. In 1923, a likely successor company, Fundição Ardinghi, Isola & Cia would have been registered at JUCESP (São Paulo Board of Trade). Advertisements of this last company can be found, from 1926, in the newspaper Correio Paulistano. In 1929, a note published in Correio Paulistano informs that “Ardinghi and Filho, merchants, established at Rua Aurora, n.36, in this capital, with a type foundry and importation of graphic material” would have “required the summoning of their creditors to propose them a preventive bankruptcy,” for which Aragão (2016: 89) supposes that it was at this moment that the foundry material would have been acquired by Funtymod, a type foundry established in São Paulo by entrepreneurs of German origin.

According to Eduardo Affonso Ardinghi, grandson of Affonso Arginghi, the foundry’s main customer was the Italian newspaper Fanfulla, which was located at Rua Formosa. Eugênio Cupolo married a sister of José Ardinghi and turned the foundry into a typographic workshop, and later into a publishing house. According to his great-grandson, Sidney Cupolo, “everything was printed on a Minerva printer and there was a linotype machine that made the lead plates with the letters arranged, and the pages were sewn on another machine and the covers were then glued together. There were practically 3 employees, a 'commercial manager' and my grandfather at Rua do Seminario, in downtown São Paulo. My father worked there for a short time, and Arnaldo stayed until the end, when he changed the activities to photolithography. The company stayed with his son, Eugenio Cupolo Neto, who ended its activities a few years later.”

Reference

ARAGÃO, Isabella R. 2016. Tipos móveis de metal da Funtimod: contribuições para a história tipográfica brasileira. Doctoral Thesis (Design and Architecture), Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, University of São Paulo, São Paulo. Available at:<www.doi.org/10.11606/T.16.2016.tde-01092016-154117>.

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