While organising the papers in my study I chanced upon some old, yellowed photocopies of a book edited by the Press Office of the City of Milan in 1969, entitled ‘Collection of Milanese Collectors’. “Travelling among collectors, we became collectors ourselves,” writes author Elena Pelizzoni, “we collected a collection of collectors. Far from the large collections, from the precious exhibits of precious items…We remained within the modest reach of the intellect and of the sentiment which satisfies a ‘personal necessity’, including the hunt, the struggle, the conquest of an object one seeks, that is unique, and that one has which others do not…”.

Running down the pages of this publication one comes across the names of the historical Milanese collectors of that time: Gino Maggioni (keys, locks and safes), Giuseppe Crippa (collector of anything made in iron or cast iron), Luigi Pippa (antique clockwork tools), Piero Riva (hourglasses), Marco Contini (gramophones), Giancarlo Pinton (irons), and so foth. It goes on to note that, “the most incurable lovers of corkscrews are three: Enzo Panbianco, a serious professor whose home is in the Centre of Milan, and collects in the spirit of scientific endeavour; Fernando Brecciaroli, photolithographic designer, lives near the Bastioni in what can only be described as partly crazy and partly ingenious attic, collects for the joy it brings; and Giuseppe Antonio Borghese, who demonstrates extremely refined taste by despising all those [corkscrews] which are not made of boxwood.”

“As we were saying, Panbianco is a scientist. For him corkscrews are the final link in the chain of the wine industry… Instrument which belongs to the past because modern civilisation, after having arrived at the bottle neck, discovered the plastic cork and so adieu to the last allowance, to the tarnished screw, and its daughter, the wings, the leaver, simple or multiple, the handle, and so on. Nevertheless, Enzo Panbianco’s collection includes an ‘exquisite, gentile, delicate’ little object from the eighteenth century which started his collection.”

“Instead, for Fernando Brecciaroli corkscrews remember toasts, and consequently, happy events. ‘For this reason I keep them,’ he says. ‘Because they’re cheerful.’ At 7 am every Saturday morning, he can be found between the stands at the fair of Sinigallia, to see if there is some model he does not yet own. If there is, he does not let it get away. For this reason he has more than 250, arranged in his 40 square meter attic, between the walls and rocks from the Dolomites (his work), the beams and the portholes (he installed), two recorders, five ventilators, air conditioners, an electric perfumer, and another 15 electronic devises and gadgets which inexplicably fit in such a small space. Each corkscrew has a name and a personality. ‘The first I bought,’ he says, ‘was so fragile that I said to myself: poor thing, it will break if I use it. But I love it all the same. More than the others.’ Spring barrel corkscrews, painted wood, some with a handle and brush to clean the neck of the bottle, in brass, in wood, in ivory, with ball bearings, for travel, for the delicate hands of women who must open perfume bottles, and to finish, some complicated English instruments that extend ‘like pantographs’ which Brecciaroli colourfully describes as the ‘scientists’ of his collection.”

While I write and transcribe these brief notes, I remember that it was Giuseppe Crippa who kindly gave me these photocopies; he and his wife Nuccia were for many years members of our association, the AICC. Fernando Brecciaroli participated in the establishment of the AICC, but then, perhaps because of distraction or other engagements he stopped attending our meetings.

In the early 80s I met the widow of Enzo Panbianco: she had a small antiques shop on the Navigli.

When she heard I was looking for corkscrews, she explained that her husband had been a great collector but that his collection had been sold. Rummaging in an antique dresser, she found two or three specimens she was willing to sell, and that I gladly bought. The collector who bought out the rest of the collection before me can rest at ease…they were not, for what I can remember, specimens of any great valuable.

I was an avid patron of antiques markets at the start of the 80s; in an unending search for different specimens. The markets of Bollate, the Navigli in Milan, and Castiglione Olona were regular visits, to which I added Casale Monferrato and Fontanellato. The collectors knew the antiquarians that regularly found corkscrews, and vice versa. In those days you rarely went home empty handed. We were easier to please, and the supply was certainly greater.

I was in London, at the market at King’s Road when Mrs. Sue Emerson, an antiquarian specialised in corkscrews said to me, “You’re from Milan: you must know the Engineer Paolo De Sanctis? He is one of the biggest collectors; you cannot possibly not have heard of him!” I returned to Milan and contacted him, and on that day my transformation into a “professional collector” had shifted gears.

Tall and somewhat odd, as a journalist had described him, the engineer showed me with little care some of the specimens of his endless collection, passing indifferently between models of great value (that I had only ever seen in books) to those of less import, but always having some characteristic in common: beautiful shape, refined design, the right balance between form and function, the sophistication of the materials, and the flavour added by time; all of this independently of the trademark or patent. You see, the engineer had based his collecting philosophy on these characteristics: rarity of patent or trademark mattered little, what attracted him was the essential beauty of the object, or, better yet, as we say today, its design. In fact, he often loves to quote the introduction written by Pierre Bernard in the French edition of the famous book by Bernard Watney and Homer Babbidge.

In 1987, Paolo De Sanctis and Gianni Giachin introduced me to, and I became a member of, the ICCA (International Corrispondence of Corkscrew Addicts); the prestigious and exclusive association of corkscrew collectors founded in London in 1974 by Bernard Watney, with the same Paolo De Sanctis and a few other ‘pioneers’.

So it was that in the course of 1988 the idea of starting an Italian association that would gather corkscrew collectors began to take shape.

Maurizio Fantoni