The Animated Book in Italy Between the 19th and 20th Centuries

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The Animated Book in Italy Between the 19th and 20th Centuries

Early Italian Movable Books

Movable book production in Italy was concentrated in a few major publishing hubs. As documented in Eliana Angela Pollone’s exceptional doctoral dissertation, Il libro animato italiano tra il 1850 e il 1950 (2022)—widely regarded as the most important and complete study ever dedicated to Italian movable books—the principal centers of production included Milan (Vallardi, Hoepli, Carroccio), Florence (Bemporad, Franceschini), Turin (Casanova, Editrice Libraria Italiana), Verona and Padua (Drucker), and Bologna (Cappelli). Pollone’s work offers an unparalleled reconstruction of Italy’s early movable-book industry and remains the key modern reference for understanding its development.

As Pollone also observes, Italy’s path toward fully mechanical books passed through a long phase of hybrid formats—die-cut shape books, hole books, cut-outs, toy theaters, and simple transformation devices—many produced for schools or domestic instruction before true mechanical picturebooks took hold.

Unlike Germany and England, which pioneered mechanical books earlier in the nineteenth century, Italy entered the market somewhat later. Milanese and Florentine publishers only became truly active in the final quarter of the century. This delay is significant, as it meant Italian publishers were drawing on already well-developed international models while simultaneously creating works suited to their own cultural and educational priorities.

Around 1900 the Turin publisher Rosenberg & Sellier issued I veri scopritori del Polo Nord. Viaggio animato di tre monelli italiani, a lively and humorous libro animato that taps into—while gently parodying—the turn-of-the-century fascination with polar discovery. Unlike the scenic-tableau formats popular elsewhere in Europe, the Italian edition employs lever-driven mechanical scenes, in which pull-tabs activate individual figures integrated into the narrative. Motion here is not ornamental but structural, carrying the action forward as the three “monelli italiani” embark on a fantastical Arctic adventure that ultimately proves to be a dream brought on by overeating sweets.

Although the book’s cover composition closely echoes that of the French Une Excursion au Pôle Nord (Raphaël Tuck et Fils, 1899)—including the central figure of an adult Inuit planting a flag—the Italian edition diverges in every essential respect. The French book belongs to a distinct international group of scenic books, later adapted for the American market as A Trip to the North Pole: A Story of Adventure in the Arctic (Saalfield, 1910; “Printed in Bavaria”) and again for the Dutch market as Een Pool-Reisje. Een verhaal vol avonturen in de Poolzee (Belinfante, ca. 1913). All three employ hinged, three-dimensional pop-up tableaux with rising backgrounds and foreground elements. Their protagonists are adult explorers “from all countries,” and their plots follow a conventional Arctic quest rather than a comic dream narrative.

Rosenberg & Sellier’s book, by contrast, is neither a translation nor a mechanical adaptation of the Tuck/Saalfield/Belinfante lineage. The visual borrowing on the Italian cover appears limited to the iconographic template, with the French flag replaced by the tricolore and the Arctic setting retained for recognizability. Once opened, however, the Italian book reveals an entirely different mechanical conception and a different story world, one oriented toward nationalizing children’s adventure during a period when Italian publishers frequently reshaped foreign motifs to reinforce notions of identity and citizenship. The presence of “tre monelli italiani” as protagonists, coupled with the distinctive lever-action engineering, strongly indicates a locally conceived production rather than a licensed import.

This is significant for movable-book history in Italy. I veri scopritori del Polo Nord documents how printers beyond the established Milanese centers were experimenting with mechanical illustration around 1910, adopting foreign visual cues while developing their own technological and narrative strategies. The absence of documentary links between Rosenberg & Sellier and the Tuck/Saalfield networks further supports reading the Turin edition as an original Italian contribution to the genre, one that stands apart from the scenic-book tradition circulating in northern Europe and the United States.

Image of the original Italian edition comes from Movable Stationery, Volume 7, No. 3 (1999)


Rosenberg & Sellier (Torino) also mounted a small but coherent lever program between 1895 and 1908. Advertised as “animated” books, the series comprises five pocket-format volumes under the banner “Animated Pictures,” each with four movable plates plus in-text illustrations, alongside the North Pole booklet. Up and Down (1895) is bibliographically elusive and remains untraced. Pull and See (1896) gathers eleven short animal pieces—some in verse, some in prose—with lively comic plates, including a memorable scene of two howling tiger cubs at feeding time. Look, It’s Moving! (issued 1901–1904) adapts five classics—Little Red Riding Hood, Ali Baba, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Puss in Boots (without a moving plate in that last case). The closing installment, Among Dwarfs and Giants (1908), is a child-friendly abridgment of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels. On stylistic and circulation grounds, scholars point to two distinct sources for the plate sets: one for the 1896–1904 titles and a separate source for the 1908 Gulliver abridgment.

Much of Italy’s first wave drew on imported models from Germany, France, England, and the Netherlands. Milanese houses—especially Ulrico Hoepli and Antonio Vallardi—brought foreign novelties into the Italian market from the 1870s onward, often for the Christmas gift trade.

Pollone’s research also underscores how deeply Italian production was embedded in transnational networks, with many so-called “Italian” movables originating as multilingual co-editions using German-made plates or mechanisms.

Hoepli (Milan) became the primary Italian conduit for Lothar Meggendorfer. Storielle buffe (1884) is the first Italian edition of a Meggendorfer movable, followed by Sempre allegri, bambini (1886). Contemporary notes and surviving copies show that several Hoepli “Meggendorfer” issues reuse German artwork and plate numbering—strong evidence that plates (and often assembly) were produced abroad, with Italian text adapted or reset for the domestic market.

Beyond Meggendorfer, Hoepli’s children’s list explored multiple mechanical and theatrical formats. Quattro grandi teatri (1884) offered paper theatres with movable “actors” (Excelsior, Pulcinella, Aida, Circo Renz). In the animal vein appeared Bestie in gabbia (1890s), a movable “zoo” album with built-up cage effects, and Bestie mobili domestiche e feroci (1890s), a related title marketed explicitly as “mobili.” Around the fin-de-siècle Hoepli also issued Pierino Porcospino vivente (c. 1898), a Struwwelpeter-type novelty presented as “living/animated.” Into the new century, Pupazzi vivi e allegri (c. 1910) gathered eight rhymed movable tableaux often attributed (in trade and collector literature) to Meggendorfer, showing the house’s continued investment in German-style picture engineering with Italian packaging.

A distinct mechanism appears with Gira, gira… Novellette per bambini (1898–1899), Hoepli’s “revolving pictures.” Likely inspired by Ernest Nister, it pins two segmented discs (volvelle) at center; a perimeter ribbon turns the upper disc so its segments slide under radial slits, dissolving one image into another. As far as current research shows, this is the only Italian disc-based movable of the first wave (c. 1880s–1910), making it a technical outlier within domestic production. About a decade later, the disc idea is “domesticated” for education by other publishers: Che ora è? Il libro delle ore, dei giorni, dei mesi e delle stagioni appears first with Marzocco and then with Franceschini, swapping the hidden disc for an exposed clock on the cover with two rotating cardboard hands—same spirit of interactive motion, different goal.

Vallardi (Milan) was among the first Italian houses to issue “figure animate” for children. By the mid-1880s it had launched Favole con figure animate (before 1885), a small album of La Fontaine–style moral tales with transformation effects; the companion Libro II carries Carl Schaller’s “CS” monogram and S&K (Schaller & Kirn) marks, clear evidence that the Italian editions reused German plate work while bearing a Milan imprint. In the same years Vallardi popularized a simple, home-market “turn-and-laugh” device under the title Volta e ridi—booklets in which every three leaves the middle one is cut down to flip the image between outcomes as you turn, a quick optical gag designed for children. By the 1890s Vallardi was issuing Italianizations of recent German hits: La zia allegra and Lo zio burlone (both 1898) adapt Lothar Meggendorfer’s 1891 pair (Die lustige Tante / Der fidele Onkel) for the domestic market, typical of the cross-border supply chain that fed Italian novelty books at the fin de siècle. Around 1907 the low-priced series Trasformazioni ridicole offered six tiny mix-and-match booklets at five centesimi each—an explicit push to make mechanical play affordable (titles include Trasformazioni istantanee and La signorina…).Taken together, these lines—import-based “figure animate,” local flip-leaf gags, six-plate ziehbilder, and penny-priced transformations—show Vallardi systematically testing mechanisms (transformations, layered ziehbilder, mix-and-match) while leveraging German plate suppliers to seed an Italian taste for mechanical picturebooks

An example of a Vallardi movable book is held in the collection of the Fondazione Tancredi di Barolo (Turin), available here:
https://www.memora.piemonte.it/px/media/2/5/8/5/1732_ca_object_representations_media_258584_original.pdf

Around 1900, Paravia (Turin) issued La storia di Gano, An early Italian “hybrid” toy-book: a sculpted/3-D head projects through a die-cut window in the cover; as you turn the leaves, printed costume layers align to that fixed head, so the character is “dressed” anew page by page. Italian scholarship cites it alongside Paravia’s other experiments—Bambinate rimate (a shaped, die-cut book, 1888) and Nella luce del sole (a leporello, c. 1900)—as evidence that Paravia was testing multiple interactive formats at the turn of the century. he firm also tried larger mechanical albums such as Nel mondo dell’allegria. Sei tavole in colori con movimenti meccanici (c. 1886–1890), a six-plate ziehbilder documented in Italian museum records and media.

Italian publishers did more than entertainment titles. They also took part in the international spread of didactic movables and dissected models. A clear case is Il cavallo. Sua struttura e sue funzioni organiche (Casanova, Milan, 1896), the Italian adaptation of Löwensohn’s decomposable anatomical model Das Pferd (plates by August Schwarz). Editions in France, Spain, England, and the Netherlands show how these layered, lift-away constructions moved across languages with minimal mechanical change.

Licensing with German firms such as J. F. Schreiber and Otto Maier broadened Italian offerings. Agreements typically allowed Italian houses to translate the text, adjust details for local taste, and issue the book under a domestic imprint while preserving the original engineering. Vallardi, Treves, Hoepli, and Paravia all appear in this network, which helps explain the mixture of Italian titles with unmistakably German mechanics on the market before 1910.

Italian publishers did far more than amuse: they helped carry the new didactic “dissected” and flap-layer anatomy books across languages. These consisted of a layered sequence (skin → musculature → skeleton → organs). A touchstone example is Il cavallo. Sua struttura e sue funzioni organiche—issued in Turin by F. Casanova in 1896—which Italian scholarship identifies as the local adaptation of August Schwarz’s German tableau Das Pferd, sein Bau, seine innern Organe (Fürth, Löwensohn, 1894). The same content circulated in France as Le cheval. Sa configuration extérieure, ses organes internes (Paris, Asselin & Houzeau, 1895), in Spain as El caballo: su estructura y sus órganos interiores (Madrid, Bailly-Bailliere e hijos, c. 1900), in the Netherlands as Het paard, zijn lichaamsbouw en zijne inwendige organen (Deventer, Kluwer, [1895]), and in Britain as The Horse: its external and internal organisation (London, George Philip & Son; also sold as The Gresham Publishing Co., “dissected model,” c. 1900). Together, these editions show how the same layered chromolithographic plate—built up in removable sections—was localized by text while the mechanism stayed constant. Casanova’s Italian program was likely a suite, not a one-off: contemporary Italian scholarship and trade descriptions point to companion tableaux such as La vacca (from Adolf Seyfferth’s Das Rind, 1895) and Il cane (Der Hund, 1897), confirming a coordinated veterinary set for schools and agricultural readers. Typical Italian copies are oblong quartos on stiff card with a “tavola a colori scomponibile” (lift-away, die-cut layers) mounted over explanatory text.

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Very exciting news! The Study Center (ICIB) is undergoing a research project on Lothar Meggendorfer, focusing on his works published in Italy by Hoepli and translated by Pasquale Fornari. The project will culminate in a publication and exhibition in 2025 to commemorate the centenary of his death.

Click here for more information https://www.pop-app.org/progetti-di-ricerca/

Image below is from Fondazione Tancredi di Barolo. "Research Projects." Pop-App: Progetti di Ricerca. Accessed December 11, 2024. https://www.pop-app.org/progetti-di-ricerca/.

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• International sourcing and licensing. From the 1870s to the early 1900s, Italian houses frequently licensed foreign plate work rather than re-engineering mechanisms from scratch. Agreements with firms such as J. F. Schreiber and Otto Maier typically allowed Italian publishers to translate text, tweak themes for local classrooms or tastes, and issue under domestic imprints while preserving the original engineering. Common adaptation steps included: (1) Italian translation laid onto existing art; (2) light localization of captions or cultural references; (3) co-publishing or distribution under an Italian brand (as with Vallardi’s Favole con figure animate and Volta e ridi).

  Imported English designs in Italy. It wasn’t only Meggendorfer: Raphael Tuck’s mechanical books also reached the Italian market. Giovanni Gussoni’s Lieti Meriggi (Milan, Ditta Giovanni Gussoni, c. 1890–1905) is an Italian edition of Father Tuck’s Mechanical Series: Friends in the Country, with four tab-operated chromolithograph plates (approx. 8 × 10.5 inches). This appears to be the only documented movable by Gussoni and a rare survival.

Gussoni, Giovanni. Lieti Meriggi. Milan: Ditta Giovanni Gussoni, circa 1890–1905. Italian edition of Father Tuck's Mechanical Series: Friends in the Country, featuring four tab-operated chromolithograph movable plates. 8 x 10.5 inches. (Only movable book on online records for Gussoni, Giovanni - also only copy we have seen surface)

Viewable on vintagepopupbooks.com https://www.vintagepopupbooks.com/Father-Tuck-pop-up-book-p/t-28.htm

Peepshows and optical views

By the mid-19th century, the Vallardi shop in Milan wasn’t just selling prints and books—it was also in the optical-amusements trade. Surviving vedute ottiche (optical views) turn up with a printed label for Giuseppe Vallardi, Milano, Contrada S. Margherita, matching the address used in early Vallardi trade catalogues. Hyde also shows several with unnamed publishers.

These optical prints sat within a broader European craze: street mondo nuovo peepshows and paper tunnel books that created depth and day-night transformations for paying audiences. Museum surveys (and the V&A’s Gestetner collection overview) give clear definitions and many examples; Italian histories place Vallardi among the Milanese dealers who distributed such material.

Early Vallardi catalogues explicitly locate the firm at Contrada S. Margherita all’angolo del vicolo dell’Aquila n. 1101, the same address seen on optical-view labels—useful when authenticating cases and wrappers. Scholarly notes on Vallardi’s 1820s–1840s output also reference vedute ottiche within the shop’s print trade.

Collector tip: On Vallardi-labeled optical pieces, look for a printed or pasted ticket reading some variant of “Giuseppe (or Pietro e Giuseppe) Vallardi, Milano, Contrada S. Margherita. A couple of examples are Presepio scenico (Nativity scene) — Pietro e Giuseppe Vallardi, Milano, c. 1825–1830. Pocket telescopic peepshow with multi-layer cut-outs; early Vallardi imprint. and Presepe da viaggio (Traveling nativity) — Giuseppe Vallardi, Milano, mid-19th century. Cased telescopic view; case label typically reads “Giuseppe Vallardi, Milano, Contrada S. Margherita.”

Further reading / images: Ralph Hyde’s Paper Peepshows: The Jacqueline & Jonathan Gestetner Collection (ACC, 2015). The V&A and the Museo del Precinema (Padova) provide concise, image-rich introductions to peepshows, mondo nuovo, and optical views. For additional illustrated examples, see the Luisella Terzi album selections at pop-app.org/albumanimati_luisellaterzi/ and the Sammlung Druckwerk feature on ziehbilder (Nel mondo dell’allegria).

1920s–1940s: Growth and Influence

Italian production ramps up after 1922: Bemporad and, soon after, the Franceschini family begin issuing homegrown animated titles, while Hoepli develops a high-quality theatrical line—its “Libri Teatro”/Libroteatro designs by scenographer Mario Zampini—drawing on the visual language of German and American pop-ups of the 1930s–40s.

While the Fascist regime initially didn't heavily restrict translations, a policy in 1937 required publishers to notify the Ministry of their intent to translate foreign works, marking the beginning of tighter control over cultural imports.

Highlights: Il Gatto con gli stivali (Puss In Boots) (Florence: Bemporad, 1937), illustrated by Ezio Anichini, brings lever-driven theater to a classic tale. It sits alongside Deposito Edizioni’s lever series “Grandi albi movibili per i bambini. Le fiabe più belle” (1931–1933)—five titles announced (Cinderella, Puss in Boots, Little Red Riding Hood, Puccettino/Tom Thumb, Beauty and the Beast)—each with two animated plates and a moving-parts cover, all by Anichini. A few years later Bemporad re-issued the line in simplified form (no lever covers, altered interior color) and appears to have released only three of the five; the missing volumes were likely casualties of the 1938 racial laws that forced Bemporad’s ownership change and rebranding as “Marzocco.” The corporate rename to “Marzocco” was formalized on October 17, 1938, and after the war the imprint reappeared on July 24, 1946 as “Casa editrice Marzocco, già Bemporad.” This is why 1942–43 titles sometimes appear on Marzocco while others carry Franceschini imprints in the same period.

Although many Americans know Pinocchio through Disney’s 1940 film, the story originated in Italy, first appearing in 1881 as a serialized tale by Carlo Collodi in the children’s magazine Giornale per i bambini, Pinocchio. Albo movibile (Florence: R. Bemporad & Figlio, [1922]) marked the first Italian movable tied to Collodi’s tale: a lever-driven “albo movibile” after Attilio Mussino’s drawings, shortened for young readers, Italian-printed, with pull tabs operating internal levers. Often cataloged undated, it is generally placed at 1922. In the 1930s and 1940s—after this Bemporad Pinocchio—a distinctly Italian production stream took shape alongside continued adaptations of foreign works, now including imports from the United States. By the late 1940s two models dominated: Renato Franceschini, who worked chiefly with Italian artists (Fernando Baldi, Cesare Calvino, Attilio Mussino, Mario Zampini, later Sergio Manunta); and the Istituto Geografico De Agostini (soon simply “De Agostini” after World War II), which leaned more heavily on foreign sources, especially the American paper engineer Julian Wehr.

Within that arc, a new Italian-made Pinocchio arrived from Casa Editrice R. Franceschini: Pinocchio animato. Grande albo delle Avventure del famoso burattino del Collodi (Florence, 1943), a large-format children’s edition built around eight pull-tab color plates (rotogravure printing). The book was a technically sophisticated and expensive production, involving many skilled trades. Lorenzo Franceschini had laid the groundwork—first as printer, then as editor at Deposito Edizioni—writing to Bemporad in December 1931 with a plan for mechanical picture books and an abridged Pinocchio. That deal never closed, but under the Deposito Edizioni mark he issued the Anichini-illustrated “Le fiabe più belle” series noted above; a 1938 advertisement adds Tom Thumb to the slate. Renato then realized the Pinocchio project: presswork finished 28 October 1942 after coordination among at least eight workshops (printers, binders, etc.); Illustrator Attilio Mussino supplied new drawings designed for the mechanisms. Pinocchio was first issued in early 1943 in two print runs with minor differences: one of 5,000 copies for Marzocco, and another of 10,000 copies credited to “Deposito Edizioni Franceschini.” Its immediate success led to a reprint as early as August of the same year, this time under the imprint “Casa Editrice Renato Franceschini” (later styled “R. Franceschini & F.o”). By 1951, the title had gone through twenty editions, making it the firm’s most prolific and enduring movable book. First‑issue tells for collectors: the debut sits in the “Grand Album” line, has a gold‑ground cover, contains eight pull‑tab color plates, and totals 98 unnumbered pages; many early copies also credit “Cav. Renato Franceschini, Via Italo Balbo 5, Firenze” on the back. The 1943 colophon lists multiple specialized suppliers—color work in Milan, rotogravure in Milan, text composition/presswork in Bologna and Florence, assembly and several binderies in Florence, and paper mills in Verona/Milan and Turin—which helps explain small state differences across impressions.

French issue: Pinokio vivant — Comtesse de Gencé’s classic translation, published in Florence by Éditions R. Franceschini & F.°, undated (c. 1943–44), using the same Attilio Mussino illustrations and pull-tab mechanisms as the Italian Pinocchio animato. For collectors, it’s essentially the French-language counterpart, with identical plates and French text throughout.

Parallel to Franceschini’s 1943 Pinocchio animato, Rino Albertarelli’s Le avventure di Pinocchio (Edizioni Cavallo, 1944) stands as one of the most ambitious Italian animated editions of Collodi’s classic. This substantial volume contains the complete text of Le avventure di Pinocchio accompanied by more than one hundred finely rendered black-and-white vignette drawings and eight large, full-color plates enlivened with intricate paper mechanisms. Each plate features a precisely engineered volvelle, or rotating disc, allowing parts of the illustration to move when the reader turns the tab. Italian bibliographic research also records an earlier Cavallo publication from 1942: a smaller-format Pinocchio entirely structured around a volvella mechanism, with a rotating disc on each page. Collectors may therefore encounter two distinct animated Pinocchio editions from Cavallo—the compact 1942 rotating-disc version and Albertarelli’s 1944 large-plate edition.

Pinocchio animato was not an isolated production. Within Franceschini’s movable-book output of the immediate postwar years, Le avventure di un pulcino e di altri animali (Florence: R. Franceschini & Figli, c. 1947) occupies an intermediate position between large-scale prestige movables and simplified novelty titles. Less elaborate than Pinocchio animato yet technically more complex than the contemporaneous Fiaba Illustrata series, the book combines a mechanically animated front cover with interior pull-tab plates (tavole animate). Contemporary and later sources note the presence of a movable duck-themed cover and lever-operated interior scenes, confirming Franceschini’s continued engagement with paper engineering beyond flagship publications. The volume has been dated to circa 1947 by Pietro Franchi, on the basis of publisher advertising and comparison with Il parco dei divertimenti (1946) and Gli animali si divertono (1948). The title illustrates how Franceschini adapted established mechanical techniques to smaller narrative formats for younger readers, while retaining Italian authorship and illustration through the collaboration of Giannino Falzone Fontanelli and Cesare Calvino.

From the collection of Vintagepopupbooks.com

Pinocchio animato was not only a lavish, multi-company production but also the flagship that launched a whole line of prestigious, mechanically-illustrated children’s books under the Franceschini imprint. Franceschini’s movable‑book output spans the early 1940s to around 1950 , with reprints/new titles through 1955, featuring richly illustrated editions with mechanical elements, often under the “Grand Album” banner and distinctive gold covers. Collectors will also encounter a sister branding on some simpler titles for younger readers—the “Collezione Dorata Franceschini”—which keeps the gold‑ground look but simplifies the mechanics or format. These titles include (among others) Le Maschere Animate (1944), a collection of humorous tales illustrated by Attilio Mussino; Biancaneve e il Principe Azzurro (1948), featuring five movable tableaux in an adaptation of Snow White; Don Chisciotte Animato (1950), with six movable tableaux; and Che ora è? (1943), a time-teaching book with movable golden clock hands.

The Pop-ups Arrive:
It was through four Disney titles adapted from the American editions by Blue Ribbon/Lentz that pop-ups first reached Italy, issued by Mondadori as early as 1935. These included ( As shown in ad above) Mickey Mouse and the Duckling, Mickey Mouse at King Arthur’s Court, Mickey Mouse in the Circus and the Woodland Dwarves, and King Neptune. At the time, however, these books did not introduce the now-standard international term “pop-up.” Copyright restrictions prevented its use, so title pages and advertising materials avoided the expression, and Mondadori instead adopted the label “sorprese illustrate” (“surprise illustrations”). Within the period under consideration, these four volumes not only represent Mondadori’s sole venture into the format but also stand as the principal example of imported pop-ups available on the Italian market.

The verso advertises their series of pop-up books (Illustrazioni a Sorpresa). The titles include Mickey Mouse at the Circus (Topolino nel Circo), Mickey Mouse and the Ugly Duckling (Topolino e l’Anatroccolo), Mickey Mouse at King Arthur's Court (Topolino alla Corte di Re Artù), and The Dwarfs of the Forest and King Neptune (I Nani del Bosco e il Re Nettuno).

image from the collection at vintagepopupbooks.com

Arnoldo Mondadori remained a pivotal force in Italian publishing throughout this period. He deliberately built a mass market for translations, bringing popular international literature to Italian readers, and he proved adept at steering through tightening censorship. Rather than dealing with local prefectures, Mondadori often negotiated directly with senior officials at the Direzione Generale per la Stampa Italiana—a strategy that gave him unusual flexibility as regulations hardened.

Against that backdrop, the first fully Italian experiments with the pop-up format surfaced in mid-1930s Milan, in the wake of Mondadori’s imported Disney titles. In 1936 the publisher La Prora issued Le meravigliose avventure della vecchietta Baffina Pimpirimpina (The Wonderful Adventure of Old Lady Baffina Pimpirimpina), appearing just a year after the Disney volumes reached Italy. Written by Dora Felisari and illustrated with verve by Roberto Lemmi, the book pairs richly colored, finely detailed artwork with four strongly three-dimensional stand-up scenes. Conceived as a lavish Christmas gift book—it went to press on December 3, 1936—Baffina Pimpirimpina frames an allegorical adventure in a format that was then still new to Italian readers.

Its origins were likely not accidental. La Prora’s founder, Giuseppe Locatelli, had worked for Mondadori until 1930 as an agent for school textbooks, and the swift appearance of Baffina Pimpirimpina after the Disney imports suggests a conscious attempt to adapt and localize that foreign model. Contemporary critics praised the book’s “sumptuous” presentation, yet rarely mentioned its most innovative feature: the three-dimensional pop-up scenes. The mechanism was not even advertised on the title page, and reviewers tended to celebrate the beauty of Lemmi’s illustrations rather than the engineering behind them. In hindsight, however, Baffina Pimpirimpina stands as a pioneering milestone of Italian pop-up publishing whose novelty was, at the time, curiously underappreciated.

Flap Books: (Terminology: Following Pompeo Vagliani and Jacqueline Reid-Walsh (with Pollone), use “transformation playbooks” to stress play, or “books with flaps with transformation effects”)

The first clearly identified movable flap (as a true mechanism, not just a shaped cut) appears in 1932 in How I Build My Balilla. It’s a hybrid: part advertising portfolio, part interactive “hole book” (pages with die-cut holes you read through).

Other 1930s books use flaps alongside different mechanisms. Example: Little Red Riding Hood (Bemporad, 1937), illustrated by Ezio Anichini, is a lever book that also includes a small door flap; open it and you see Little Red about to enter her grandmother’s house.

It’s also worth noting that while no English-language editions were produced during WWII, as Fascist Italy was an enemy state, no French editions are known to have been issued during the occupation years. A limited number of French-language editions began appearing only after the war, between the late 1940s and 1951. These were printed in Florence but distributed in Paris by Albin Michel—likely a postwar economic arrangement that allowed Italian printers to supply the French market without the cost of re-establishing full production in France. The series included French versions of Pinocchio Animato, Batuffolo, Topino et Grenouille (with the mole in the original text replaced by a mouse), and Les Fables de La Fontaine. In contrast, during the war, German-language editions of at least two titles (Dornröschen and Aschenbrödel) were produced in Nazi Germany. Alì Babà was never translated, likely because it was considered “volksfremd” (foreign to the people) under Nazi cultural policy. Additionally, wartime paper shortages and the need for specialized color printing greatly limited the production and export of Italian movable books during the war years.

During the early to mid-twentieth century, Italian publishers also produced a number of simple three-dimensional children’s books known as libri a rilievo (“books in relief”). Publishers such as Casa Editrice Carroccio of Milan issued illustrated titles during the 1930s and 1940s that employed scenic stand-up pop-up panels rather than complex mechanical devices. Titles such as their Pinocchio pop-up books demonstrate that Italian publishers continued producing three-dimensional picture books during the interwar years and into the period of World War II, reflecting the broader European revival of pop-up picture books during this era.

Pop-up scene from Pinocchio (Libri a Rilievo No. 21), Casa Editrice Carroccio, Milan, 1941:

Post-War Era and Artistic Contributions

Creative Works of the 1940s and 1950s:

Tuscany-Based Publishers:

Tuscany was the other major center for Italian movable book production in the mid-20th century, with Florence carrying forward a rich publishing legacy shaped first by R. Bemporad & Figlio and, later, by the Franceschini family. In the early 1930s, Deposito Edizioni—a Florence imprint linked to Bemporad—issued a series of lever-action fairy-tale albums whose mechanical ingenuity and colorful lithography influenced later Tuscan productions. During the 1940s, Franceschini’s animated Pinocchio editions became benchmarks for Italian movables, The firm produced a variety of richly illustrated and technically sophisticated works, including Le Maschere Animate: I Fantocci di Mastro Girolamo (1944), illustrated by Attilio Mussino with six pull-tab plates, and Il Più Grande Zoo (1944), with eight elaborate pop-up relief scenes—some later repurposed in an undated panorama/leporello format. In the immediate postwar period, Franceschini issued Le Favole di Esopo and Le Favole di La Fontaine (1946), each with pull-tab plates by Fernando Baldi, and experimented with formats ranging from cover-integrated movables (Topino e Ranocchio, 1949) to boxed miniature “libraries” of animal books with movable covers. A couple of examples of their panorama books include the zoo leporello mentioned above and other scene-based fold-outs that condensed stage-set imagery into an accordion display.

Franceschini’s postwar list also shows a willingness to explore playful, non-traditional formats, such as Pippo e Cristina (Florence, 1948), a paper-doll book illustrated by Marina Battigelli. These and other Florentine titles demonstrate how Tuscany’s publishers adapted prewar techniques to the aesthetic and economic realities of the postwar years, ensuring the region remained a vibrant hub for movable book innovation alongside Milan.w Tuscany’s publishers adapted prewar techniques to the aesthetic and economic realities of the postwar years, ensuring the region remained a vibrant hub for movable book innovation alongside Milan.

Bruno Munari of Milan:
In the same years, Bruno Munari introduced an avant-garde, child-centered approach to interaction—exemplified by Il prestigiatore verde (1945)—that would help shape Italian design sensibilities in the postwar era. In 1945, shortly after the birth of his son Alberto (b. 1940), Munari created a landmark group of eight children’s books for Arnoldo Mondadori Editore known as the Libri del ’45 (Books of ’45) series. The original Italian titles were Toc Toc, Gigi cerca il suo berretto, Mai contenti, Il prestigiatore verde, Storie di tre uccellini, L’uomo del camion, and Il venditore di animali. Each title elevated the humble paper flap into the “narrative star” of the page—more than a decorative element, these hinged, liftable pieces were engineered to conceal one state of an image and reveal another, propelling the story through surprise and interaction. The books themselves were sensory invitations, marked by bold die-cuts, strategically placed holes, and large, elegantly simplified designs that encouraged playful discovery. Unusually for Italian movable books of the period, the series was an immediate success abroad: French editions appeared in 1946 from Éditions du Pré-aux-Clercs, and English-language versions, including Knock Knock. Who’s There? Open the Door, Gigi Looks for His Cap, Never Happy, The Green Conjurer, Stories of Three Little Birds, The Man with the Truck, and The Animal Seller, were issued in London by Harvill Press soon after the Italian originals. Today, the Libri del ’45 stand as a testament to Munari’s belief in the magic of paper and the boundless possibilities of design-driven storytelling.

Theater Books by Hoepli:

Hoepli produced a distinctive series of theatrical libro-teatro books in the early 1940s, conceived by scenographer Mario Zampini, whose work epitomized Italian ingenuity in movable formats. While paralleling the creative momentum of American and British pop-up books of the 1930s and 1940s, these productions retained a distinctly Italian character rooted in stagecraft and fine illustration. One notable example is Alì Babà e i 40 ladroni (Milan: Hoepli, c. 1945), designed by Zampini and brought to life by illustrators such as Raimondo Centurione and Felice De Cavero. Composed of six elaborately layered die-cut scenes, the book was engineered to be viewed under light and rotated, producing a striking sense of theatrical depth and shifting shadow.

On the eve of the Second World War, Hoepli also issued a particularly ambitious carousel-style theatre book format. Opening to a full 360 degrees, each volume presented six three-dimensional stage sets with painted panels—often by Centurione—designed to be illuminated from above for dramatic effect. Trade records and museum holdings date these editions to approximately 1940–1942. Unlike mass-market pop-ups, these libri-teatro were luxury collectibles, produced in small numbers. Only a handful of titles are known, including Cenerentola, Alì Babà e i 40 ladroni, and La bella addormentata nel bosco.

De Agostini—formally the Istituto Geografico De Agostini of Novara:
De Agostini entered the movable-book market after World War II and mostly issued lever books under its own imprint, particularly in the “Albi animati” series. Output scaled quickly:

1948 (2 titles): Biancaneve; Il gatto dagli stivali.
1949 (3): Ciuf Ciuf l’allegro trenino; Giorno di festa; Animali viventi.
1950 (5): La bella addormentata nel bosco; Il corvo e la volpe; Pinocchio; Tip e Top; La volpe e la cicogna.
1951 (7): L’acciarino magico; Batuffolo; Cappuccetto Rosso; Giacomino e il gigante; Guignol; Zenzerino; Lo zoo animato.

De Agostini’s postwar engine (Novara, 1948–1951). Entering the field late, the Istituto Geografico De Agostini mostly issued imported lever books under its own mark—especially in the “Albi animati” series—and scaled output quickly: 1948: Biancaneve; Il gatto dagli stivali. 1949: Ciuf Ciuf l’allegro trenino; Giorno di festa; Animali viventi. 1950: La bella addormentata nel bosco; Il corvo e la volpe; Pinocchio; Tip e Top; La volpe e la cicogna. 1951: L’acciarino magico; Batuffolo; Cappuccetto Rosso; Giacomino e il gigante; Guignol; Zenzerino; Lo zoo animato.

Beyond its own list, De Agostini also printed for other publishers—German editions for Azed A.G. (Basel) and French runs for Hachette, Les Éditions de Varennes, and J. Barbe (Lyon). Through J. Barbe—who coordinated with Azed and held European rights to Julian Wehr’s U.S. “Blue Book Editions” (Duenewald Printing, New York)—many early De Agostini movables adopted Wehr’s hallmark look: a paper dust jacket that repeats the cover, hard boards (often blue), and a colored spiral binding.

Hachette grouped related titles in its “Les Albums Hop-la!” series: 1949 Blanche-Neige and Les trois petits cochons (Disney); 1950 Histoire de Babar; 1950 Zig et Puce (which De Agostini also issued in Italian after acquiring rights). Les Éditions de Varennes offered a simpler, low-cost line in 1950—no spiral and only two animations per book (Le corbeau et le renard; Le renard et la cicogne; L’histoire de Pinocchio; L’histoire de la Belle au bois dormant). In practice, Varennes functioned as De Agostini’s French vehicle, so the Novara house was often printing for itself under a Paris imprint.

Other Post-War Books of Interest

The Istituto Geografico De Agostini in Novara, best known for its precision cartography and printing expertise, also applied its advanced presses to the production of movable books. Several of these titles were exported internationally, reflecting the firm’s ambition to compete beyond the Italian market. A notable example is Gli animali viventi (1949), a lever-operated animated book with four moving plates adapted from Julian Wehr’s American design. The Italian edition preserves Wehr’s kinetic charm while introducing localized text and, in some cases, altered color palettes, creating a collectible that bridges Italian and American movable traditions.

Marina Battigelli’s Pippo e Cristina (1948), produced for R. Franceschini in Florence, is a paper-doll book complete with clothing and accessories. Battigelli’s lively, fashionable illustrations capture postwar optimism and domestic play culture. Surviving examples in uncut condition are rare, making the book especially appealing to collectors of both paper dolls and Italian movables.

In Milan, the Carroccio publishing house issued the Libri a rilievo scenici series in the early 1940s, a visually rich but little-documented venture comprising twelve numbers. The earliest titles were single fairy-tale booklets with one relief plate, followed by editions that expanded into four stage-set scenes “in forma di teatro” to create miniature, multi-act performances. The final pair of titles, Pinocchio and Orlandino, were produced as leporellos, integrating scenic reliefs into accordion-fold structures. The series demonstrates how publishers adapted format and spectacle to wartime and early postwar constraints.

Renato Franceschini’s L’amore delle tre melarance (1944; reissued 1949) employed his distinctive “floating layers” technique in a simplified scenic design. A single double-page spread uses stacked illustrated planes to create theatrical depth in an economical yet striking presentation.

The 1957 collaboration between Angela Galli Dossena and Max Beer, 4 storie in cellophane, marked a bold experiment in transparency-based design. By incorporating cellophane panels into the illustrations, the book achieved layered, semi-transparent effects that were highly unusual in Italian children’s publishing of the period. This approach anticipated later mixed-media developments in interactive bookmaking.

Kubasta in Italy - 1960's and 1970's:

ARTIA (Praha) was the Czechoslovak state foreign-trade publisher charged with exporting cultural goods and earning hard currency through multilingual “co-editions” with Western houses; by the mid-1960s it was moving thousands of titles in dozens of languages. In Italy, ARTIA licensed/co-published Vojtěch Kubašta’s pop-ups with two Milan imprints in the Del Duca group—Industrie Grafiche Cino Del Duca and Le Edizioni Mondiali—so Italian readers received the original paper-engineering and signature three-dimensional centerfolds with localized Italian text. Telltale imprint lines read “Cino Del Duca Editore — Artia, Praga” (or the Mondiali equivalent), and even on Italian-market copies the manufacturing note typically states “Stampato in Cecoslovacchia / Printed in Czechoslovakia,” reflecting that printing and hand assembly were done in Prague and shipped finished to Milan. The Italian houses handled retail channels and, at times, jacket or price variants; Cino Del Duca’s Italian-French footprint helped spread staple fairy tales such as Pinocchio and Cappuccetto Rosso across Europe in the 1960s, while Le Edizioni Mondiali kept additional lines circulating into the late 1960s–70s, often under ARTIA’s export imprint.

This division of labor mirrored ARTIA’s broader Cold-War strategy: Prague supplied design, printing, engineering, and finished stock; Western partners supplied language adaptation, brand recognition, and market access—Italy via the Del Duca network (parallel to arrangements in the UK with Paul Hamlyn/Bancroft, etc.). Contemporary commentary on Kubašta’s output notes the speed and scale of hand assembly that let ARTIA turn out many thousands of copies per title, and trade listings as well as library records consistently show the dual imprinting (Milan publisher + ARTIA, Prague) that documents this co-edition model.

Italian editions that we have found include:

Cappuccetto Rosso — Cino Del Duca / ARTIA, 1962–1965 (multiple Italian printings)
Hansel e Gretel — Cino Del Duca / ARTIA, 1962; reprinted c. 1968
Cenerentola — Cino Del Duca / ARTIA, 1962
I tre capelli d’oro (The Devil’s Three Golden Hairs) — Cino Del Duca / ARTIA, 1969
I sette corvi — Cino Del Duca / ARTIA, 1966
Il lupo e i sette capretti — Cino Del Duca / ARTIA, 1968
Il pescatore e sua moglie — Cino Del Duca / ARTIA, 1968
Alì Babà e la montagna magica — Cino Del Duca / ARTIA, 1969 (six pop-up scenes)
Tip + Top e il razzo lunare — Le Edizioni Mondiali / ARTIA, 1966
Tip-top-tap e gli aerei — Le Edizioni Mondiali / ARTIA, 1966 (square format; six pop-ups)
La contadina intelligente — Cino Del Duca / ARTIA, 1969

To Close:

By the early 1950s, Italian movable-book production had begun to recover, with publishers once again exporting to France, Germany, and other European markets. Many prewar titles were reissued—sometimes with updated artwork or simplified mechanics—while new designs reflected postwar aesthetics and the economic realities of reconstruction. This modest resurgence paralleled the broader revival of Italian publishing as the nation rebuilt its cultural industries and reestablished its place in the European book trade.

Yet the historical record for Italian movable books remains unusually fragile. As Pollone emphasizes, this field has long suffered from what she terms a form of “bibliographic invisibility.” Movable books were considered ephemera rather than literature, rarely catalogued by libraries, inconsistently preserved by publishers, and often produced in small print runs for holiday gift markets or school use. Even before the devastation of World War II, documentation was patchy and incomplete. Several important publishers—including Carroccio in Milan, Cappelli in Bologna, and Gussoni in Milan—left almost no surviving business records, and today they survive in scholarship primarily as “ghost publishers,” known chiefly through surviving copies rather than through archival documentation.

The situation worsened dramatically on November 4, 1966, when the catastrophic Florence flood destroyed vast quantities of archival material—publisher records, correspondence, printing proofs, catalogues, and reference collections that would have documented Italy’s movable-book industry. As a result, much of what once existed can no longer be traced. Modern reconstructions of early Italian production—such as the painstaking bibliographic work surrounding the Franceschini output—must rely on surviving copies, scattered trade notices, museum holdings, and the dedicated research of scholars and collectors to piece together this rich but partially lost heritage.

Today, the study of Italian movable books depends on assembling these fragments. It is precisely this scarcity that makes the work of contemporary researchers so vital. As Pollone and the Pop-App community demonstrate, recovering Italy’s movable-book tradition requires a combination of archival investigation, comparative analysis, and the collaboration of collectors worldwide. Although much has been lost, what remains reveals a tradition of remarkable technical ingenuity, artistic experimentation, and cultural specificity. By bringing these surviving works back into focus, modern scholarship not only restores a long-overlooked chapter of Italian publishing but also secures Italy’s rightful place within the global history of movable and interactive books.

Bios on selected Italian Publishers:

Antonio Vallardi

Antonio Vallardi (1813–1876) came from a long line of Milanese printers and booksellers. His grandfather, Francesco Cesare Vallardi (1736–1799), had established a printing and bookselling shop in Contrada Santa Margherita in the mid-eighteenth century, a place that quickly became a cultural hub in Milan. The business passed on to Antonio’s father Pietro (1770–1819) and uncle Giuseppe (1784–1861), who operated under the name Fratelli Vallardi from 1812 and gained distinction for publishing books and art prints. He became owner of the company upon Pietro's death in 1819.

In 1843, Antonio founded his own firm, Antonio Vallardi Editore, a few years after his brother Francesco had started a separate venture. His publishing house soon became recognized for academic and linguistic works, as well as high-quality maps and guides. Vallardi’s cartographic output in particular made a lasting mark, supporting both education and travel, and helping to disseminate geographical knowledge throughout Italy.

Although Vallardi was not best known for children’s entertainment, his firm contributed to early educational and mechanically enhanced works that employed interactive elements. The company’s strength in maps and visual presentation lent itself naturally to folded sheets, layered designs, and other features that echoed the mechanics of movable books. From the 1870s onward, Vallardi—alongside other Milanese publishers such as Hoepli—served as a conduit for importing and adapting foreign novelty formats, particularly German and French movable books, into the Italian market, especially in the Christmas gift trade.

The Vallardi family retained control of the publishing house into the twentieth century. After various reorganizations in the 1960s, the A. Vallardi mark was acquired by Garzanti in 1970 and eventually became part of Gruppo Editoriale Mauri Spagnol in the 1990s.

Ulrico Hoepli


Image: Ulrico Hoepli, photograph by Guigoni & Boffi, Milan (c.1890). Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.


Ulrico Hoepli (Johannes Ulrich Hoepli; Tuttwil, Switzerland, 18 February 1847 – Milan, 24 January 1935) was a Swiss-born, Italian naturalized bookseller-publisher who built one of Italy’s most respected imprints. Arriving in Milan as a young man, he purchased a bookshop in the Galleria De Cristoforis on 7 December 1870, a few steps from the Duomo, and from 1871 developed a full editorial program alongside bookselling.

Over the following decades he fashioned a brand identified with high-quality technical and scientific publishing. In 1875 he launched the Hoepli Manuals, concise handbooks for students and professionals that became a national institution. The house also specialized in dictionaries, atlases, and instructional guides that helped standardize practical knowledge in modern Italy. In 1885 Hoepli was appointed Bookseller-Publisher of the Royal House, cementing his reputation.

He also invested in children’s and family publishing, developing strong chromolithographic production and a line of “animated” or mechanical picture books. Late-nineteenth-century catalogues list titles such as Sempre allegri, bambini. Otto quadri mobili; Pasquale Fornari’s Libro magico del bene e del male with twelve transforming scenes; Quattro grandi teatri (paper theaters); Gira-Gira; and the “Libri indistruttibili” printed on cloth. These relied on simple but effective devices—movable panels, transformation scenes, rotating elements, and reinforced boards—that combined play with pedagogy. Under Hoepli’s imprint, Italian adaptations of Lothar Meggendorfer’s works also circulated, often translated or mediated for local readers by Pasquale Fornari.

Hoepli balanced publishing with civic patronage. In 1921 he founded the Ulrico Hoepli Popular Library to expand access to reading, and two years later, in 1923, he converted his firm into a family limited company. Though he and his wife had no biological children, he ensured continuity by placing “adopted” grandchildren and close relatives in positions of responsibility. He also established the Ulrico Hoepli Foundation in Switzerland to further cultural and educational goals. His most visible gift to the city of Milan was the Ulrico Hoepli Civic Planetarium, designed by Piero Portaluppi and inaugurated on 20 May 1930, which remains one of Europe’s largest planetariums.

In 1923, Hoepli formally reorganized his business as a family limited company, appointing his adopted grandchildren and relatives as directors and managers to secure continuity.

Hoepli died in Milan in 1935 at the age of 87, leaving behind both a flourishing publishing house and an international bookstore. In the late 1930s, the Galleria De Cristoforis was demolished and replaced with new buildings, but the Hoepli bookshop was reestablished nearby. During the war years the firm suffered severe losses, including the destruction of its warehouse and bookstore in the bombings of 1943–45. Carlo Hoepli, the founder’s grandson, moved the headquarters to Via Berchet, then later to Via Hoepli, the street named in honor of Ulrico, a short walk from the Duomo. From there, the “Libreria Internazionale Hoepli” grew into a Milan landmark, offering technical works and foreign-language books unmatched in scale.

Under the successive leadership of Carlo Hoepli and later his sons Gianni and Ulrico, the firm rebuilt and expanded in the postwar decades. In 1972 Ulrico Hoepli became president, followed at the turn of the millennium by his son Ulrico Carlo, joined by his own children Giovanni, Matteo, and Barbara—representing the fifth generation of family stewardship. In this period the publishing house phased out in-house printing, concentrated on editorial development, and continually refreshed its hallmark manuals and reference works while adding new fields: engineering, computing and ICT, business, design and architecture, photography, nautical and aeronautics, and modern languages.

Today Hoepli Editore and its six-floor bookstore on Via Hoepli remain family-run, housing more than half a million titles and continuing a 150-year tradition of technical, educational, and cultural publishing rooted in Milan but known throughout Europe.

The historical archive of the Ulrico Hoepli Publishing House is now at the Apice Center of the University of Milan.

An example of Hoepli’s production, Bestie vive e burlone: sei grandi quadri mobili e colorati con storielle gaie e ridevoli, may be viewed here:
(Issued with the same plates as Allô! Allô! Bostock (Paris: A. Capendu Editeur, 1900))

https://www.memora.piemonte.it/px/media/2/5/8/6/79431_ca_object_representations_media_258646_original.pdf

Paravia Publishing House (Turin, Italy)

Paravia, founded in Turin in 1802 by Giovanni Battista Paravia (1765–1826), is one of Italy's oldest and most influential publishing houses. The company initially focused on educational and religious publications, reflecting the cultural and intellectual needs of the early 19th century. Giovanni Battista Paravia was a Turin bookseller-publisher who, in 1802, joined the printers Giovanni Sebastiano Botta and Francesco Prato to acquire an existing seventeenth-century concern and relaunch it under the Paravia name.
His son Giorgio Paravia (1789–1850) transformed the enterprise from a small devotional press into a modern educational house.

After Giorgio’s death in 1850 the business passed to the capable manager and family relative Innocenzo Vigliardi (1822–1896), who later obtained permission to append “Paravia” to his surname—evidence of continuity between the Paravia and Vigliardi phases. The retail bookshop that later generations recall as “Libreria G. B. Paravia” moved in 1873 to Via Giuseppe Garibaldi 23, where it would operate until the twenty-first century; wartime bombing in 1942 damaged the premises but the shop was restored. The publishing headquarters shifted again in 1927 from via dell’Arsenale to a new complex at Corso Vittorio Emanuele II / Corso Racconigi, at the same time the company exited in-house typography to focus on editorial work—another sign of industrial maturity. Much of the historic company archive was lost during the Second World War; surviving family papers are at the Fondazione Tancredi di Barolo. In the late twentieth century Paravia’s educational profile fed into a series of consolidations: the brand ultimately combined with Bruno Mondadori to form Paravia Bruno Mondadori (PBM) in 2000 and now lives on within Pearson Italia’s school division.

Ditta Giovanni Gussoni:

A Milanese typo-lithography, stationer, bookbinder, and publisher active from the 1870s into the early 1900s. The firm specialized in inexpensive printed entertainment and learning aids for families and children—board games (including giochi dell’oca), cut-outs and paper soldiers, toy-theatre sheets and humorous playlets, calendars (including revolving-disc “volvelle” styles), and didactic objects such as hand-finished educational globes. This hybrid mix of ephemera, toys, and schoolroom materials places Gussoni squarely within the Italian tradition of “play to learn” publishing of the period.

Founded in 1874, when Giovanni Gussoni acquired the typographic business of Antonio Ronchi at Via Unione 5, the company soon expanded beyond job printing. In 1883 the retail premises moved to the Southern Porticoes on Piazza Duomo, while the workshop continued to turn out both commercial work and the firm’s own imprints. Over the years the name appears in several trade styles—Tipografia Giovanni Gussoni; Ditta Giovanni Gussoni; Gussoni & Dotti, Editori (seen on late-nineteenth-century globes); and later Stabilimento Litografico Gussoni & Rocca on calendars and advertising pieces—evidence of a house that combined retail, publishing, and contract printing.

Succession followed a family line: after Giovanni, his son Vittorio directed the firm. On April 16, 1907, Vittorio sold the company to Giovanni Serra, who continued operations at least through November 1910. Some institutional catalogues ascribe the foundation to “Giacomo” Gussoni, while trade sources and imprints consistently use “Giovanni,” matching the shop name; this almost certainly reflects the same family concern recorded under variant forenames.

For a study of Italian movable and children’s print, Gussoni is significant not only for its output of paper games and cut-outs but also for items with simple mechanics—slotted assemblies, layered toy-theatre scenes, and rotating calendars—bridging stationery, toy, and educational markets in fin-de-siècle Milan.

Arnoldo Mondadori:


Arnoldo Mondadori, photograph originally published in Epoca magazine (No. 1082, June 20, 1971). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.


Mondadori, a cornerstone of Italian publishing, has long been renowned for producing Italian editions of international literary works. Known for their meticulous translations, Mondadori ensures that original texts are both preserved in spirit and tailored to resonate with Italian readers. As the largest publishing company in Italy, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore boasts a rich legacy in the publishing industry.

The company was founded in 1907 in Ostiglia by an ambitious 18-year-old, Arnoldo Mondadori, beginning with the publication of the magazine Luce! This marked the start of an illustrious career in publishing. In 1919, Mondadori moved its headquarters to Milan, a cultural and intellectual hub, paving the way for its rapid growth and influence.

In 1935, Arnoldo Mondadori orchestrated a landmark agreement with Walt Disney, culminating in a personal meeting with Walt and Roy Disney at Mondadori's home in Meina. This collaboration resulted in one of the largest international deals signed by Disney at the time, cementing Mondadori's prominence in children's publishing. Under this partnership, Mondadori published a series of children’s books based on Disney cartoon characters, a collaboration that endured until 1988. These publications, including the "Illustrazioni Sorpresa" series, introduced Disney's beloved creations to generations of Italian readers and solidified Mondadori's role as a leading publisher of children's literature.

Fratelli Treves

Fratelli Treves of Milan (1861-1932) was one of the leading Italian publishing houses of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Founded in 1861 by Emilio Treves (1834-1916), the firm appealed to an educated readership and published authors of the scapigliatura movement such as Iginio Ugo Tarchetti and Antonio Ghislanzoni. In 1870 Emilio was joined by his brother Giuseppe and the imprint became Fratelli Treves. The house published major Italian writers including Giovanni Verga, Gabriele D'Annunzio, and Edmondo De Amicis, while also bringing international voices such as Gustave Flaubert, Emile Zola, Leo Tolstoy, and Fyodor Dostoevsky to Italian readers. After Giuseppe's death in 1904 the firm was reorganized as a joint-stock company, and following Emilio's death in 1916 leadership passed to his nephew Guido Treves. In 1931 the company merged into SA Treves-Treccani-Tumminelli, but it dissolved soon after Guido's sudden death in 1932. In addition to its literary output, Fratelli Treves played an important role in children's publishing, particularly in the development of movable and illustrated books in Italy. These editions often drew on German and French traditions but were adapted for Italian audiences with local themes and strong chromolithography, balancing entertainment with education. The first Italian-made animated book is generally considered to be Gioppino in cerca di fortuna (Fratelli Treves, Milan, 1890). By introducing movable and transformation books at a time when such productions were flourishing elsewhere in Europe, Fratelli Treves helped ensure that Italy participated in the international conversation around illustrated and mechanical publishing.


Casa Editrice R. Franceschini

Florence, early 1940s–1955, was one of the most consistently Italian-driven movable-book publishers of the mid-century. The firm’s roots lay in the long printing and editorial career of Lorenzo Franceschini, a Florentine typographer and printer whose work reached far beyond children’s books. In the 1920s, while directing the Tipografia Giuntina, he handled prestigious and sometimes controversial projects, including the 1928 first edition of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, printed in Florence to evade British censorship. Even after the death of his wife Isolina in 1928 and a nominal retirement from Giuntina, Lorenzo remained active, issuing books under his own “Tipografia L. Franceschini” imprint and, by 1931, beginning to publish movable picture books through his new imprint Deposito Edizioni.

His early movables were marketed both individually and through a company fortnightly magazine. In the late 1930s he added Libri Sagomati—shaped, hinged-figure books such as Balilla and Piccola Italiana, reflecting the propaganda climate of Mussolini’s Italy—as well as the Gran Teatro delle Maschere, a sturdy cardboard toy theater with a Collodi text. While Lorenzo’s movable output in the 1930s was limited, it demonstrated a commitment to producing Italian-authored and Italian-illustrated works rather than relying on imported plates.

His son Renato Franceschini (1897–1978) inherited both his father’s training and his entrepreneurial drive. Educated as a typographer at Giuntina, Renato built his career at the Bemporad publishing house, rising to general manager in the 1930s and authoring popular works ranging from hunting manuals to children’s primers—some selling in the hundreds of thousands. After leaving Bemporad (by then renamed Marzocco due to anti-Jewish restrictions on the founding family), Renato turned to children’s books full-time, joining his father in the movable-book trade.

In 1942, he founded Casa Editrice R. Franceschini and began issuing a more professional and sustained list than his father had managed. The house quickly became known for robustly engineered lever and pull-tab mechanisms, scenic “floating layers,” and the signature “Large Format with Gold on the Cover” line—sumptuous gift-book albums with three movables apiece. A couple of notable examples are the firm’s Panorama di Firenze and Panorama di Roma, large accordion-fold scenic books that presented sweeping city views in a format similar to 19th-century panoramas but adapted for a mid-20th-century children’s market. Artists such as Attilio Mussino, Cesare Calvino, Aldo Silipigni, and other Florence-trained illustrators contributed to the list.

Unlike most other publishers of the period, Franceschini sometimes integrated moving parts (swivels, pull-tabs) into the front covers of books. These were protected by cellophane sheets to prevent damage—anticipating techniques later seen in 1970s novelty books.

By the early 1950s, the company’s mix of novelty books, school titles, and low-cost illustrated editions had made it a fixture of the Italian children’s market. Although production slowed and the firm wound down by the mid-1950s, the Franceschinis established a durable model for Italian-made movables: locally authored texts, Italian art and engineering, and a visual identity distinct from the German and American imports that had dominated the market before 1940.