Facce Italiane
Facce Italiane
Unlike the two Arti e Mestieri series, the Facce Italiane espresso set was designed by just one artist. Contemporary Art artist Sandro Chia (born 1946 in Florence) decorated the cups with faces of the people of six Italian cities (Florence, Milan, Rome, Siena, Venice and Trieste).
I think that Chia's idea about faces on the cups in 1993 wasn't very original because in 1992 he painted a
3 series touringcarmodel for the "BMW Art Cars series". Look at the likeness...
It seems that illy did not exactly know how to precede with the collection cups. Maybe that they came up with the idea to produce some of the same signed and numbered series for longer times, just with a different year (1993, 1994 and 1995). The first collection series was produced in September 1993 and says "illy collection 1993". The second one is from 1994 which says "illy collection 1994". In 1995 there was another version, made by Mitterteich (instead of Richard Ginori). On the inside of the cups of this version the inscription says "illy collection" and on the bottom it says "illy collection 1995". So the year moved from the inside to the bottom.
Hard to say what the official collection version should be, but on the illy web site only the 1993 version is listed. Beside that, the 7th Facce "Pompei" cup is also from 1993!
| artist |  Sandro Chia.
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| type | 6 espresso cups, signed and numbered |
| copies | 28.889?? |
| manufacturer | 
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| inside | illy collection 1993 |
| bottom | 
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| other editions | - illy collection 1993, bar cups, not S/N - illy collection 1994, S/N - illy collection 1994, bar cups, not S/N - illy collection, S/N 1995, Mitterteich - illy collection, bar cups, not S/N, Mitterteich - amici collection, S/N 1994, Mitterteich |
| brochure | 
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