All'Origine

Name: All'Origine
Address: Imola, 40026, IT
Telephone: +390542641968
Price range: ££

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European mid-century originals Innovare attraverso il recupero del passato, questa è la nostra filosofia.

All’Origine propone una collezione di pezzi unici e serializzatidel Novecento, provenienti da Italia, Balcani e paesi mitteleuropei. Ogni articolo, accompagnato da un certificato di autenticità che ne attesta l’età e la provenienza, è sottoposto a un trattamento di recupero e pulizia che lascia inalterati i segni dello scorrere del tempo e il fascino delle piccole imperfezioni. Perché ciò che All’Origine offre, in alternativa alla greve e solenne rigidità dell’antiquariato tradizionale, sono la leggerezza e l’ironia del quotidiano, il libero movimento di oggetti vivi e veri collocati in un paesaggio domestico fluido e creativo

Innovating the present by recovering the past, this is our philosophy. All’Origine offers a continuously enriched and renewed collection of unique and serialized pieces, especially Novecento; they come from Italy, the Balkans and Middle European countries. Every item, accompanied by a certificate of authenticity that proves its age and origin, is submitted to a cleaning process without altering their charming small imperfections left by the passing of time. What All’Origine can offer, as opposed to the stifling and solemn rigidity of the traditional antiques, is the lightness and irony of everyday life and the free movement of lively, real objects placed in a fluid and creative home landscape. Home and garden, restaurant or shop window, All’Origine will find for you the ideal solution to transform your space or event into unique settings and moments.

24/08/2026

Everything you absolutely didn't need to know about Alexandrite glass.

First of all it's actually Alexandrit™ and yes, it's a trade name.

As many of you surely know, Alexandrite glass has a unique shade of purple and is one of several types of dichroic glass, meaning it sends off light in different wave lengths depending on the type of light hitting it. It appears purple when looked at under most light sources, but turns light blue under fluorescent light (sometimes improperly called neon light).

This property is granted by neodimium, a chemical which started being used in glass manufacturing in the late 1920's. Neodimium glass is in fact it's other name. But why is it commonly called Alexandrite?

We'll have to take you back another 100 years to early 1830s Russia. In the Ural mountains a new gemstone, previously unknown, was discovered: green under sunlight and red in artificial light. The name Alexandrite was chosen as a homage to Czar Alexander II (then heir to the throne). Deposits of Alexandrite gemstone have since been discovered in Brazil, East Africa and Sri Lanka but it is still very rare and valuable today.

Back to early XX century: in 1927 famed Bohemian crystal maker Moser commissioned a research to a group of German chemists who over the span of two years helped the brand bring to market a new kind of neodimium-infused glass with the property of changing color from purple to blue.

Some marketing genius at Moser had the idea to trademark the name Alexanrit as it was already associated with a very luxurious color changing material (the Alexandrite gemstone of coursee).

The first range ever of Alexandrite glass items was presented by Moser at the 1929 Leipzig Spring fair.

Many brands followed suit in the years to follow.
In France and Italy Neodimium glass became popular especially in the 1960s and 70s.

At All'Origine we select both pressed and mouth blown pieces and since we are unable to lie: the second picture made with Ai 😭😭. We did not have an appropriate fluorescent light when we shot this picture about 6 months ago. But now we have it. Next time our photographer Luciano Paselli is here we will take new pictures, I promise.

03/07/2026

Lauscha glass!

This style of glass is specific to the city of Lauscha and nearby areas in the German state of Thuringen. It has a wild origin story and it starts with Christmas trees!

First off, did you know that the Christmas tree originates as a German tradition? Also, did you know that well into the 1800's people were still decorating them with nuts, apples and lit candles?

Well that all changed abruptly in 1847 because of a famine: apples and nuts were way to expensive to put on trees, so a glass maker in Lauscha by the name Hans Greiner had the idea to make some ornaments out of glass.

The Christmas tree tradition by that time was already spreading throughout Europe thanks to the relations between royal families and just one year later queen Victoria of England (who had caught wind of this new product) had some glass ornaments sent from Lauscha to decorate her own tree. A new tradition was established.

The manufacturing technique is s called lamp work: a glass tube is heated under a torch and then worked by hand or blow-molded. Some glass makers in Lauscha still keep this tradition alive today!

But there was a huge "hickup" after WWII: Lauscha became part of East Germany and new laws banned the production or Christmas ornaments. During this time the advancements in technology made in other parts of the world (USA first and then China) permanently took Lauscha off the map of Christmas ornament mass production.

But in this very period the glass makers from Thuringen developed new products and new styles to stay in business: these are the small vases, candle sticks and free-standing sculptural pieces that All'Origine selects! Many of them have a very 1960's space age look. Their aesthetic was absolutely cutting edge in its time and era-defining today.

These pieces were all made using the same techniques previously adopted for Christmas ornaments. They became very popular and really helped save the glass industry in Lauscha.

Oh, they came in many colors by the way, not just blue. I think we were a bit too focused on the darts when we made this set and didn't really choose our most representative pieces 😅

Picture by Luciano Paselli

14/04/2026

We really love this picture by .
It feels like the thumbnail from a surrealist stop-motion short that we would really love to watch 😅

It is instead one of the shots from our 2026 catalog, specifically from the "Teaching Props" category. We do not specializ in teeth and our collection goes way beyond anatomical models! We just happened to find a few of these large scale dental props in Bulgaria. All untouched and in original box, with production date June 1980.

As you might have noticed from our last few posts, in this set of shots we include one or more foreign objects to spice up each composition.
In this case we chose a toy car made by blow molding sometime in the 1970s. It is part of a much larger range of XX century items that we have recently begun to investigate: All'Origine is pursuing color, boldness and good vibes!

If you are reading this anytime before April 26th 2026 you can come see for your self in Milano at Fuorisalone!

The All'Origine pop-up shop will be open in Via Tortona 31 from April 20 to 26. Courtesy of .fish and .navone

13/03/2026

Fish shaped ceramic dishes have been a staple of our catalog for almost five years now! They are sourced all around Europe with most of our finds coming out of Italy, France and Portugal. Hungarian, German and Czech models also occur quite often.

However, when we picked the dishes for this set together with our photographer we weren't really thinking about countries of origin. We were focused on shapes, color schemes and proportions that fit well together.

In an act of totally involuntary patriotism we somehow picked only Italian made dishes😅. From left to right and top to bottom we have: a very colorful specimen by Rometti of Umbertide (near Perugia in the Umbria region), a model by R.B. ceramiche artistiche from Casale Monferrato (Piedmont), then a dotted dish marked Nove di Bassano (Veneto region) and lastly a more recent, possibly 1980s design by Italica Ars (Lastra a Signa, Tuscany).

So we apparently neglected our own region Emilia-Romagna, but worry not, the parochialism runs so deep in our subconscious that it made us throw in also three pieces made in this very town - Imola - in the 1970's: those three glossy black lumps are in fact ceramic test proofs by a young ceramic student by the name Umberto Cassani.

19/02/2026

Together with Buon Ricordo dishes (previous post) our "woven flasks" have one of the most fascinating origin stories: around the 1940s, throughout the Balkans and Carpathians, miners began salvaging spent electrical equipment such as electric wires from detonators and bringing them home. Members of their family (usually women) would then pair these plastic wrapped wires with a glass bottle or flask to make these elaborate woven works you see in the picture. Though it was very time consuming, this was a cheap way to obtain a container you could carry around that had a handle and that didn't break as easily as a naked glass vessel.
Born out of necessity, but with an esthetic twist from the get-go, objects obtained by weaving plastic wire in this fashion around a glass bottle became rather popular in various areas of Europe in the following decades. In the 1950's it was a popular craft in France as well, where the name "Bouteille Scoubydou" was coined.

If you ever find one of these, flip it over: if you see copper wire poking our the plastic where each little cable is cut, then you have very likely found a pretty old specimen from Eastern Europe!

09/02/2026

We've told the story of Buon Ricordo dishes many times, but we never get tired of it! Did you know that once we even told it to ?

You still find their article online with some pictures straight out of our Imola showroom. Ahhh, we felt so international that day, what a thrill!

Anyways, long story short for all those who are new to these funky Italian dishes: back in 1964 an Italian marketing genius by the name Dino Villani came up with an idea for a small association of restaurants offering regional cuisine. To be admitted your venue had to offer a good value and good quality regional themed menu. Once part of the association a commemorative dish would be designed for your restorant with a custom illustration depicting your most famous dish in a cartoonish way. All dishes were handmade and hand painted in Vietri by Fratelli Solimene.

A decorated plate commemorating the venue was gifted by each restaurant to all patrons who ordered their Buon Ricordo menu.

The association started out small, only 12 restaurants, mostly in northern Italy. Allegedly business boomed for all 12!

People in Italy were finally starting to have some disposable income so it makes sense that many would want to try all 12 restaurants and collect all 12 commemorative dishes.

Soon many more restaurants would request admission to the association and hundreds of them were accepted over the following years, fueling a form of collecting that was quite literally a craze at the peak of Buon Ricordo's fame between the 70s and 80s.

The association still exists today but we only source dishes made before 1996. They changed enamels after that date and the new colors lack that warm vintage feel we get from the dishes made between 1964 and 1996.

Photo by

26/01/2026

Wooden shelves from the Balkans, sourced between several East European Countries. All the paint coats are 100% original and most of the time heavily layered, with wear revealing different colors painted one over the other.

Occasionally we find specimens specifically crafted to be hung in corner spots. Like the others they were mostly used to display potted plants, both indoors and outdoors.

Wider shelves (such as the yellow one in this picture) were instead referred to as "radio shelves" hinting to the fact that most users would hang them in an indoor setting to sustain their old timey audio equipment.

The wooden model houses in this picture are not part of the All'Origine offer, at least not as of today: we never know in how many weird directions our research will branch out in the future!

Photo and idea for this wacky composition are all to blame on

14/01/2026

Metal vases, produced by BMF in West Germany during the 60s and 70s.

Just one of the many reasons we absolutely have to go to Germany at least twice a year. This country has become one of our favorite ones to research European mid-century Originals over the past four years.

The longstanding industrial tradition made it an epicenter of design and production throughout the whole XX century (and long before). Then the separation between the East and the West forced the parallel development of different products and esthetics. We see this very much also with post-WWII German glass and ceramic items!

BMF vases are just one of many styles or metal vases we research and select. You find pictures in our previous posts and more will be coming soon (ish)!

13/01/2026

Technically a new subcategory: animal shaped glass decanters. But as much as we would love to have these in good numbers at all times, they are pretty rare to come by and only represent an occasional find: this trend was short lived and local to Empoli (Tuscany) so not that many were ever produced. Allegedly the first to design an animal shaped glass decanter in this style was Giorgio Bessi, lead designer at Vetreria Etrusca, sometime in the early 1979s. He had a background in ceramics and a sculptural approach. He brought his designs to life with clay, then his models would be translated into glass molds by specialized technicians.

After the success of Bessi's dog decanter, other glass makers from the Empoli district began making versions of their own, very much inspired by those produced by Vetreria Etrusca. You can see four examples in this picture.

Side note:
we've had other products by Bessi in the past (namely a set of drinking glasses) and they had his name molded into the glass. This is quite a unique thing! And to make it even stranger the glasses were not marked with the brand name, only the designer's. Other items by Vetreria Etrusca are instead marked with the VE monogram. The company still exists today and marks its products with the same monogram.

Photo by

12/01/2026

New product category for 2026.

The theme is stone artifacts, but we realize the toy horse is a bit distracting😅. Our photographer really wanted to use this prop and we couldn't let him down.

Indirizzo

Imola
40026

Telefono

+390542641968

Sito Web

http://www.allorigine.it/

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