Vitale Barberis Canonico

The 1908 version was his last sample book. He took part in its planning but did not live long enough to see it come to fruition. Giovanni Maria Tonella died on 19 September 1907. The output of his woollen mill was highly varied. Good carded wool; warm fabric in warm colours for winter, cool ones for summer; classic, linear designs, not lacking in colour. At his death, his children were already moving the firm ahead. Adolfo, Gennaro, Enrico (married to Tilde Loro Piana), and Valerio (husband of Itala Ferla). There were also his widow (Maria Trabaldo Togna) and daughters Anna, Ersilia, Celestina, and Mary. So many children – a true sample book of potential descendants.

Giovanni Maria Tonella was a weaver. His father, Bartolomeo (1815–1869) was a shoemaker, like his grandfather, Antonio (1785–1844), whom he never knew, since he was born on 8 May 1852. They were from Cereie, or rather ‘Cereje’, a village suitable for craftsmen’s workshops but not for factories. The latter required water and space, and in these hills both were in short supply. And yet …

And yet, Giovanni Maria Tonella, who did not wish to stitch shoe uppers but preferred to weave diagonally striped twill, managed to come up with something. To begin with, there is the 1873 date on the former firm’s labels. Of course, Giovanni Maria was quite young them, but at the time one was not only an adult but a fully grown man at age twenty-one, so why not give credence to that founding mill? At present, though, there is no precise information about the production and commercialisation of its fabrics.

In any case, in 1876, at age twenty-four, he was part of the circle of entrepreneurs who founded the ‘Lega di Risparmio’ [a kind of credit union] for their workers. 

In 1882, he was known as an ‘industrialist’. In August of that year, Giovanni Maria Tonella published advertisements in L’Eco dell’Industria – Gazzetta Biellese proposing the sale of machinery: ‘1 English mule-jenny with 210 spindles; 1 Waste beater, Canepa system; 1 80-cm card. All in excellent condition and at a very favourable price’. This equipment for preparing and spinning wool was located in Cereie, a sign that his mill continued to function in that area. In autumn of the following year, still in Cereie, he was still trying to sell the Canepa beater as well as a ‘water wheel 8 metres in diameter and 1.72m wide, reservoir entirely in red larch with a cast iron crown. All in perfect condition, virtually new’. A mastodon! Probably originally part of a mill that used little water but with a good flow.

The Vitale Barberis Canonico historical archives contain documentary traces and sample books related to Giovanni Maria Tonella, but not from that early in his career – a difficult period for so many textile mills, which experienced difficulties and instability at every level. Giovanni Maria Tonella held on for more than ten years, then had to resign himself to the inevitable. In 1894, he declared bankruptcy. Nothing serious, much less strange. These things happened. They happened often. Very few business owners were able to save themselves. Many would try again, many would begin all over without losing face – on the contrary. Excellent names that represented the history of the Biellese and national textile industries would become insolvent at the end of the 1800s and then start up again, becoming successful, immensely successful.   

Old documents reveal little about the specific circumstances of Giovanni Maria’s entrepreneurial misadventures, but newspapers of the time also refer to another Tonella, Celestino, a very distant cousin, as if the latter had triggered the debacle of the former. The situation was grave, so much so that in order to pay his many debts, Giovanni Maria Tonella was forced to sell ‘bolts of fabric, recycled and natural wool, cotton, warp chains, yarn, oiled wool, tools, carts, wagons, and household furniture’. The divestiture began on 18 September 1894 and continued throughout the autumn, at increasingly lower prices. In the summer of 1895, it was still not concluded. On 11 July 1895, in fact, the following advertisement appeared in L’Eco dell’Industria:

Giovanni Maria Tonella was obliged to sell his steam-powered tractor. Had he reached rock bottom? Maybe. But, to a large extent, that difficult moment was already behind him, because in the meantime, the Triverese weaver had gotten back on his feet and had started another, more successful, industrial adventure. And he had just been waiting to be able to involve his children in the profitable business that he had started, no longer in Cereie, but along the Sessera Stream. It’s not clear how things developed, but following the 1894 bankruptcy, Giovanni Maria Tonella went into business with his father-in-law, Quirico Trabaldo Togna, or, more likely, with his brother-in-law, Pietro Trabaldo Togna, launching the company name ‘Tonella & Trabaldo’, which, in Pray, produced ‘velvety fabrics and solid-colour novelty half ends’, as attested to in the 1897 Guida Allara nel Circondario di Biella. In the late 1920s, in his book on the industrial development of the Biellese devoted to the Valsessera, Vincenzo Ormezzano wrote that Giovanni Maria Tonella had moved from Trivero ‘with modest means, first joining his brother Antonio and later Mr Luigi Zignone [who later pioneered textile industrialisation in the Valsesia region in Quarona (author’s note)], then with his brother-in-law Pietro Trabaldo Togna [later founder of the great Trabaldo Pietro Togna Woollen Mill of Pray (author’s note)], exhibiting attentiveness and intelligence in the wool industry and bequeathing to his children an industrial company that has now become one of the best in Vallesessera’. These experiences in diverse companies, these variable-structure partnerships, even if short-lived, were the rule in such an uncertain, unstable environment.

Nevertheless, Adolfo, Gennaro, and Enrico and their father established ‘Giovanni Maria Tonella & Figli’ on 9 May 1907, on a solid basis since it was founded within the context of the family. A new chapter opened, that of the affirmation and success outlined by Ormezzano.

The fabrics speak for themselves. The ones from those years, still perfectly preserved in the historical archives of Vitale Barberis Canonico, tell of modern clothing, classic but not too much so, smooth but also supple, even sporty, for leisure activities, in which the novelty of the design enhanced the quality of the weave, even if the yarn was not the finest. An excellent compromise between creativity and affordable prices.

In that same year, as already mentioned, Giovanni Maria Tonella left this world for a better one. The deed of incorporation drawn up in the spring smacks of winter, of an omen of death. Maybe Giovanni Maria was aware he was ill and could not procrastinate. Newspapers lauded him as follows. ‘Chrysanthemums. We reverently place a flower of mourning on the tomb containing the body of the illustrious industrialist Tonella Giovanni of Pray, who at only 55 years of age was taken from the affection of his large family and his workers, and from the esteem of his colleagues in the industry. Condolences to the heartbroken widow and to his sons, daughters, and other relatives, all mourning this terrible family tragedy’.

His death closed down neither the spinning mills nor the looms of the Flecchia factory, since Giovanni Maria and his children were already firmly established there. Their destiny crossed that of the Piantinos and their firm on the bank of the stream between the Flecchia hill and the town of Pray.

But that’s another story, one that is worth being told in another episode…