badges and depressions, and cloisonne

[JHertzman@xxxxxxx]

In AD7-149 John Justus writes: 
"In trying to bring the trunk badge up to the quality of the new paint, I have
found the design of the IAP metal badge is much closer to the original plastic
badge but three different badges have been woefully constructed with voids in
the enamel or whatever it is.  I gave up trying to get a better one.  The Re-
Originals badges are much higher in quality, plastic, but are not close as far
as being a duplicate of the original badge.  If anyone out there has another
source, I would appreciate hearing about it."

I am very surprised at voids in the enamel on IAP badges; they must have had
one batch with quality control problems. The technology is ancient, not at all
uncommon on an arts & crafts level, and on an industrial level quite
commonplace. It is, admittedly, more problematical where several colors are
used.

Two good sources should be Ereminas Imports and Black Bart's Emporium. Several
years ago a friend and I visited Ereminas when Don was just getting in a new
batch of super-quality badges to offer above his standard line; my friend was
repelled by the degree of perfection, which really asked for examination with
a magnifying glass to see how much more sharply defined every detail was.
Gilding the lily, making a fetish of an inappropriate level of finish. He was
a philosophical perfectionist who would rather have a reasonable amount of
orange-peel on a production car than a concours clear-coat where it didn't
belong. Bob Bartel (Black Bart) has a very extensive line of badges; if John
Justus ever gets near Fort Wayne he might drop in. Any retailer, of course, is
somewhat at the mercy of market quality variations among suppliers. 

John Justus also corrected me (thank you) on my incorrect statement about a
depression where the C-pillar badge was: "there was no depression on the C-
pillars for the badges, only the two holes.  There is a depression on the
trunk lid for the badge, which was plastic, as was the front grill badge."
Good points. The trunk badge came in a generation after the C-pillar badge.
The Sprint GT had just a grill badge, the Sprint GT Veloce added the C-pillar
quads, and the 1750 evidently added the trunk badges. I can't pin down the
first trunk badge; early roundtails didn't have them, early squaretails before
the ducktail didn't, but some roundtail 1300 Spiders did. The Giulia 'brick'
sedans never had them in any version, as far as I know. The first photos of
the 1750 Berlina don't show it, but my '69 has one. Giulietta Spiders had one
on the trunk latch, Sprints and I believe Speciales had a simplified black and
chrome badge on the trunk (which I used on the nose of my dechromed Giulietta
Spider in the sixties), but there seems to have been a period of six or seven
years when one badge, on the grill, was enough. I'm now tending in that
direction myself, authenticity be hanged. 

There is a fairly good pair of articles by Enrico Castruccio on enameled
badges in the Fall 1989 issue (#15) of Il Quadrifoglio- the ARDONA/Pfanner
edition, not the real one- translated, probably not too faithfully, from
articles which would have been written for the original edition. A point of
curiosity is that the laurel wreath, which was added to Alfa's badge in 1925
in celebration of winning the first World Championship, had been used on the
round badge of the Benz from 1910 to 1925 (when Benz merged with Daimler,
losing its separate identity.) Even more curious is the fact that Fiat then
added a laurel wreath to its round badge from 1928 to 1931. Also mildly
interesting for iconographers is the Isotta-Fraschini (Milano) badge of
1904-1915 which, in letter forms and proportions, seems to have been the
source for the Alfa badge's overall composition.

On Quadrifoglio, I had written, in reply to a what-is-it-and-where-can-I-get-
it question posted by Peter Gries in AD7-141, a brief (!) outline of the
convoluted history of that publication, which I posted to the digest. It
disappeared. Since I also answered Peter off digest, there is no need for a
repost, but if anyone is curious about the history and my slant on the product
I will be glad to forward a copy off-digest.

John H.

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