RICHTER & Co of NAPLES

the printer who invented a style and built a business from it

A NOTE: Several years ago I pointed to the market the distinguishing style of Richter's hotel luggage labels. I was not particularly surprised when the market responded by identifying those labels by name, nor when they came to command better than average prices. However I was somewhat bewildered at seeing worthless designs treated as if they had a particular interest just because they were "signed by Richter". Actually  fewer than half of Richter's many labels are really interesting (by design or otherwise) and less than 5% are really prime designs.

In this essay I offer you an history of Richter, information on how to date their issues and my view of what is a great Richter label. Needless to say that my views are strictly personal, I do not aim to convert you to them and you should go by your own taste and not let mine influence you in the fruition of your own collection.

A SHORT HISTORY OF RICHTER: Richter & Co was established in 1842 by a Swiss printer, to produce chromolithographs in Naples. After the unification of Italy, Richter became a supplier to the royal household, specializing in several fields including the printing of bank notes. Around the turn of the century Mario Borgoni, a then young artist, started doing graphic work for the company.

By the end of the XIX century Richter was printing promotional items for commercial ventures. Some clients were hotels and soon Richter was designing and printing all sorts of paper items for the burgeoning Italian hotel industry. The first hotel labels were issued in 1900.

By 1906 Mario Borgoni had become Richter's artistic director and the company was managing the graphic image of hotels all over Italy. At this time you should read my article on this artist by clicking HERE. Borgoni's Liberty style as applied by him to hotel labels established a trend that reigned supreme until the advent of the Deco Style. It meant success for Richter & Co who were soon selling labels of their design to hotels in most European countries, North Africa and the Middle East (Richter's work for Egyptian hotels is particularly noteworthy), the Far East, and even the Americas.  

Mario Borgoni was Richter's most influential graphic designer. His work is rarely signed but is often distinguishable by the masterly treatment of the human figure and the setting of scenes against an early morning or late afternoon sky.  Some signed Borgoni posters were reduced for use as labels and these carry his monogram, the letters “Mbi” inside a circle with an arabesque.

The other noteworthy Richter artist signs his label designs with a monogram made up of varying stylized versions of the letters “JNP” and has been identified as French postcard and graphic artist J.Paschal.  Paschal seems to have worked under Borgoni’s direction, from whom he borrowed the style, from the early 1900s to, at least, the late 1920s.

Borgoni left Richter in 1930, at the time when the shock waves of the Wall Street crash of 1929 started hitting the European hotel industry. His departure marks the end of the Golden Age of hotel luggage labels. During the 1930s Richter was reduced to issuing worsening reeditions of earlier designs and much inferior original work. After the war Richter reissued some earlier designs together with utterly uninteresting, albeit new, photographic labels before disappearing in the early 1950s.

DATING RICHTER LABELS Richter's signature varied during the half century of its activity as a label printer, and a knowledge of its evolution can come handy. The earliest signed Richter labels sport the mark "Richter & C” and this was used from about 1900 to the middle 1920s, coexisting with several alternate forms. Yet, the occurrence of early, anonymous, Italian labels with lettering in the Richter style suggests that the very first labels by this printer may have not been signed. In the early 1900s (and for a few years only) a number identifying the design was used associated with Richter's signature. At about the same time, the signature "Lit. Richter & C" was occasionally used until it was superseded by "Stab. Richter & C", used from about 1907 to 1914. After the First World War, only the old "Richter & C" seems to have been used for a number of years.

It was customary for printers to freely copy designs from other printers whenever customers desired to reprint an old label. On November 1925 a law was passed in Italy to protect all graphic designs against copying, and in the late 1920s Richter's labels started to include a note to that effect: "Riproduzione vietata" ("Reproduction forbidden" sometimes in the language of the country where the hotel was located). Finally, in the 1930s, there were some changes to the type of society, so that after circa 1935 the signature used was "S.A. Richter & C" replaced a few years later by "S.p.a. Richter & C" which was used from just before the war until the last years of the company.