Francesco Federico Cerruti’s entrepreneurial career unfolded against the backdrop of industrial Turin, starting in the years of the “economic boom” that began in the mid-1950s, when the city established its image as a “one company town” (perhaps a slightly overthetop expression) and ended in the 1980s/90s, when the so-called “post-Fordist” phase coincided with the deindustrialisation of the urban territory. 

Turin was Italy’s industrial capital in the 1950s and 1960s, a period when the market primarily expanded due to both internal demand and exports. The city underwent radical changes during the shift from internationalisation to globalisation, a transition marked initially by the oil crisis in 1973 and, subsequently, by the introduction of neoliberalist policies and of information technology in the 1980s. As we are well aware, these economic, technological and political fractures left a profound mark on Turin’s appearance and identity, bringing about the end of the so-called “factory city”.

Turin’s evocative industrial history in the second half of the twentieth century is owed to leading names who played a very active role on the local and national scene. They came from two business worlds that “coexisted side by side without ever meeting”: on the one hand, the large enterprise, such as Fiat, involved in the international cycle of Fordist work organisation and mass production, and, on the other, family capitalism, represented by the small and medium enterprises that accounted for the biggest part of Turin’s manufacturing industry. 

The figure and business of Francesco Federico Cerruti fit within this diverse and complex context, closely tied to Turin’s tradition of work and culture. A combination of oral and written sources has made it possible to draw up an initial biographical profile of the businessman, revealing a number of interesting discoveries, such as his hard-working nature, his dedication to work and his numerous interests, all typical of the Piedmontese business community. The first question to be answered regards establishing what type of businessman he represented: the business dynasty or family, the innovative entrepreneur, the manager or the businessman who knows how to grasp market opportunities.

Accounts from those who knew him paint a picture of a captain of industry with a highly dynamic and enterprising personality and a very intelligent and charismatic man with a complex and demanding character, who could sometimes be strict but also had a sense of fun and playfulness, even sometimes dabbling in poetry and writing verses dedicated to his loved ones, friends and business partners.

Francesco Federico Cerruti was born in Genoa on 1 January 1922 to Giuseppe (1890-1972) and Ines Castagneto (1892-1977). His father, a man of modest circumstances who worked for a Genoese bookbinder, moved with his family to Turin in the early 1920s. The family always kept up its ties with Genoa, both because of relatives there and because of their great fondness for the city.

Despite being resident in Turin, the parents’ decision to ensure that their eldest child was born in his mother’s Genoese home testifies to their attachment to the Ligurian capital. According to the account given by their daughter Andreina, Giuseppe was sent to Turin to open a new branch. In February 1923, as we can deduce from a letter sent by the secretary of the Regia Scuola Tipografica e di Arti Affini to the “director Mr Cerruti”, the small company was called Legatoria Cooperativa and was based at Via Barolo 19, presumably now Via Giulia di Barolo in the Vanchiglia neighbourhood, not far from the city centre. This district, traditionally occupied by artisanal activities and small industry, became the setting for the family’s private and business affairs until the 1940s.

As Andreina recalls, Giuseppe soon set up on his own, founding a family-run bookbinding company in which his school-age children were also directly involved. Indeed, in February 1925, their father established a simple limited partnership together with Domenico Matta and the Società An. G. B. Paravia, calling it Legatoria Industriale Torinese (Lit), and keeping the headquarters at Via Barolo 19.

The small family company found itself in a highly dynamic industrial, technological and cultural scenario in the 1920s and 1930s and, above all, in an artisanal sector - Piedmontese bookbinding - that could boast a glorious and long-standing tradition. The publishing market was very promising at the time and Turin’s publishing sector was represented by a number of major publishing houses and a large number of international cultural, journalistic and publishing initiatives and enterprises.

At the same time, Turin was also becoming a real hotbed of technical experimentation and innovation, while private industrial and financial groups promoted new infrastructure investments that changed and modernised the city, offering its citizens new services, such as the telephone. Cerruti’s father, Giuseppe, probably realised the technological and economic importance of the telephone sector and, in 1930, made his first contact with the Seat (Società anonima Elenchi ufficiali per gli Abbonati al Telefono).

Despite the general economic crisis, due to the financial crash of 1929, which led to difficult times for Turin too, the Lit began to grow thanks to its ability to diversify its production. Not only did it carry out traditional and modern artistic bookbinding, but also produced registers, letter books, sample books, advertising signs and office boxes. The growth of the business required Cerruti to look for a larger space and in July 1930 he decided to rent some premises at Corso San Maurizio 29, not far from the previous headquarters.

Further demonstrating the company’s expansion, a year and a half later, in 1932, Giuseppe Cerruti reached an agreement with the landlord to extend the premises further. This proved a wise decision, because in 1934 Lit obtained an exclusive contract to produce the telephone directories for almost the entire country. The telephone service network was divided into five areas spanning the whole of Italy. Lit was assigned the first, second, third and fifth zone.

During this phase of the company’s expansion, its production underwent a sudden transformation in technological terms, highlighted by the move from binding the volumes using a wire system to the so-called stitch system, using cotton, linen, hemp or synthetic thread.

The expanding production led to the need for new warehouses and in December 1937 Giuseppe Cerruti signed a lease for some underground premises at no 1 Corso Regio Parco. Just as war was about to break out, Lit showed itself to be a very dynamic company, as can be seen when looking at the list of the numerous processing machines, including sewn binding machines and automatic Brehmer folding machines.

Francesco Federico, therefore, spent his youth in a lively, modern city packed with ideas, despite the great crisis that affected the city’s economy and the restrictions imposed by the Fascist regime. The latter imposed autarky on the Piedmontese capital, but this policy did not enjoy the widespread support and dynamic organisation observed in other Italian cities.

The home environment he grew up in was an austere one, characterised by great devotion to work, as was the wont of the Piedmontese industrial world. Indeed, this focus on work would characterise the businessman’s entire life. A poem written by the young Cerruti at the age of fifteen paints a picture of the father to whom he devoted some significant verses for his name day, describing him as “untiring and an able bookbinder”. His parents gave him a strict education, which had a major influence on Francesco Federico’s upbringing and character. He always adopted a very simple and sometimes intransigent lifestyle throughout his life. Even his decision to study accounting revealed a pragmatic and professional view of his future.

Italy entered the war on 10 June 1940 and in July of the same year Francesco Federico completed his studies at the Istituto Tecnico Commerciale Germano Sommeiller, whose teachers included Luigi Einaudi and whose students included Giuseppe Saragat. The following year, Andreina completed her high-school diploma at the Istituto Magistrale Domenico Berti and started working for the family firm. In September 1940, Francesco Federico enrolled in the Faculty of Economics and Commerce and attended the courses until 1943. There are records testifying to his active participation in university lessons, demonstrating a marked aptitude for subjects such as accountancy, statistics and political economy, in which he achieved the top grade.

This phase of his life dedicated to study was fundamental to his training and his business culture and took place in a prestigious university setting, associated with the “Scuola di Economia di Torino” represented by a host of notable lecturers, including Luigi Einaudi. There are a number of reasons why he never completed his degree, first and foremost the numerous difficulties caused by the war. Between 1942 and 1946, Lit’s production fell significantly and telephone directories were replaced by update bulletins. The delay in transferring the equipment belonging to the company and the Tipografia Stet to a safer area had serious consequences. In addition to the many inconveniences suffered, the war period also left a very deep mark on the life of the Cerruti family. The bombing raids of 15 July and 13 August 1943 completely destroyed the company on Corso San Maurizio.

In autumn 1943, Italy was divided into two separate parts, one fighting against the other. The family tried to take back control of its life and its business within this context. Despite the total loss of almost all the machinery and some of the raw materials that brought the company to its knees, the goods stored in the underground warehouses on Corso Regio Parco were taken out of the city, to San Sebastiano Po, to a property owned by Count Cordero di Vanzo. In the meantime, Giuseppe and his family set up a small workshop in which they began installing some new machinery. The destruction of Lit created such an emergency situation and led to such operating difficulties that in 1944 Seat, which had around fifty employees at the time, decided to hire the company and to take on the Cerruti father and son temporarily.

During this very agitated period of Italian history, the Cerruti family undertook to carry on their business, continuing to work in close synergy with the telephone directory company that had close ties to the Sip group. At the time, the directors of the Sip and Stet included the lawyer Attilio Pacces, who was respectively the general manager and deputy chairman of the two organisations. During the most crucial phase of the Resistance, he was involved in running an underground information organisation using the telephone network, an activity that proved invaluable during the Liberation. The Cerruti father and son were in contact with Pacces, in a relationship that continued even after the end of the war, until his death in 1956.

The documentation drawn up to apply for reparation for war damages paints a picture of a company that, until the early 1940s, worked for the most important organisations and the most prestigious companies of the time: Eiar, Fiat, Lancia, Lattes, Nebiolo, Paravia, Stipel, Set, Seat, Sei, Sip, Timo, Telve, Unione Italiana Fabbricanti Autoveicoli. It worked on numerous projects for Paravia, including Italian and foreign language dictionaries, music dictionaries, historical publications, literature and adventure novels, particularly those by Emilio Salgari.

In the immediate post-war period, Lit recovered its production capacity and in 1949, having regained full autonomy, it soon became a leading firm in its sector. Seat went back to taking over other smaller companies and in the 1950s, with the publication of the Teti directories, it became the only telephone directory publisher in the entire country. The transformation of Italian society during the economic boom, when a consumerist lifestyle began to become more widespread, is also demonstrated by the increase in the number of households with a telephone, which rose from 1.5 million (including 931,000 private numbers) in 1954 to around 4 million in 1963. These financial and social changes had a huge impact on Lit. The directories were published in hardback format until the mid-1950s, when the production “revolution” took place: a new perfect binding technique was introduced at the new plant, on Via Pianezza, allowing for stitch-free binding, which involved using vinyl adhesive on the spine of the volume and made it possible to cut production costs.

The introduction of this innovation, thanks to Cerruti’s trip to the United States in the 1950s, revolutionised the company by mechanising its production: the small family firm was transformed into a major bookbinding industry; the introduction of American machinery took Lit to the highest levels of manufacturing, thanks to the quantity of commissions for binding art books (its clients included major publishing houses such as Allemandi, Einaudi, Franco Maria Ricci, Mondadori and Rizzoli), but above all the Italian telephone directories, a contract awarded to it by Seat for many years, all the way through to the mid-1990s. Since it was the first company to use a system of this type in Italy, Lit began chain production with separate machines following the collection, covering and cutting system. It modernised its processes over the year, going from manual to mechanical work, all the way through to automation and robotisation. 

The positive production trend meant that it needed new premises. In 1956, the company moved to its new plant on Via Ludovico Bellardi and then in 1969 to the one in Cascine Vica (Rivoli), on the outskirts of Turin. This additional company expansion, which permitted a “leap forward in quality”, was triggered by the launch of the “Pagine Gialle” (Yellow Pages) promoted by Seat in 1966, marking the start of a new system of commercial advertising. The number of employees reached around 150, involved in different aspects of the process.

Lit stood out for its capacity for innovation and for keeping up with technological progress, ensuring that it always had cutting-edge equipment in order to supply a product able to satisfy demands and to adapt to the constant increase in telephone connections in the 1970s and 1980s. With the introduction of new digital technology and the increasingly widespread use of mobile phones, the company was forced to close in September 2013.

Cerruti’s focus on innovation also corresponded to an awareness of the importance of his work, demonstrating how he was not an isolated entrepreneur by establishing relations with other companies. On 10 January 1969, Cerruti, together with other local firms representing industrial and artisanal bookbinding, formed the Associazione Italiana Aziende di Legatoria to protect interests, lend assistance and provide opinions and advice to members.

Cerruti’s dedication to bookbinding is also apparent in his decision to live in an apartment near the factory, on the outskirts of the city, in Via Ludovico Bellardi. In addition to his work ethic, based on professionalism and stringency, an approach typical of family capitalism in this region, he also displayed great organisational skills and a spirit of innovation. His profile can therefore be placed within that Piedmontese tradition of innovative entrepreneurs, whose key figures include Adriano Olivetti and Michele Ferrero, but which also includes numerous lesser-known representatives capable of highly innovative visions, such as Francesco Federico himself. Those who worked with him and knew him saw him as a highly reliable businessman with great business ethics.

His biographical profile is also characterised by a second element, which places him within a milieu that was particularly present in the Turin area, namely widespread art collecting within the business world. It is worth mentioning some examples of the best-known collectors, all of whom have different stories but play a key part in this tradition of Turin-based art lovers in the twentieth century: Riccardo Gualino, the Agnelli family and Marco Rivetti. The combination of art and business should therefore be studied and explored closely, not just because of the implications linked to the search for investment channels for the business community, but also because of the all-round vocation of beauty and culture of a certain Turin-based business world. Within this context, the story of Francesco Federico shows itself to be a model worth examining and analysing. In Cerruti, the combination of a love for beauty, the quest for perfection in detail, and the intransigency and stringency applied to the workplace provides a key to reading an unusual biographical profile, which is difficult to classify, and to understanding his world view.

Cerruti’s interest in collecting was not an end in itself, but interwoven with his business. The accountant became a promoter of culture on particular occasions, not just as regards lending works to local, national and international exhibitions, but also as regards initiatives in the antique and modern books sector, supporting the organisation of three bookbinding exhibitions.

In October 1994, the Chamber of Commerce in partnership with the Centro Studi Piemontesi organised an exhibition of bindings in private Piedmontese collections. Cerruti took part in it, exhibiting “a Morocco-bound exemplar with doublée decoration on Dante Alighieri, Vita Nova (Paris, 1907), splendidly bound by the great French binder George Cretté”: in October 2005, at Villa della Regina, Professor Francesco Malaguzzi organised an exhibition of precious exemplars curated by Luciano Fagnola. Twelve of the Cerruti’s exemplars were included. The De libris exhibition, curated by the Chamber of Commerce and the Centro Studi Piemontesi, opened at Villa della Regina in 2007. It included À la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust, in the N.R.F. 1919-27 edition, with the fine binding by Paul Bonet and eight autograph letters by the author. During the exhibition in October 1994, the organisers promoted a binding competition for Piedmontese workshops to support a prestigious artisanal tradition with a rich past. In the light of this initiative, it seems likely that Francesco Federico felt the need to relaunch the sector and create a school for binders, although this remained a project that was never put into place.

In addition to the captain of industry’s love of beauty and his visionary ability, we must also consider a third element, namely “giving”, associating him with those twentieth-century entrepreneurs involved in philanthropy. Indeed, it is well worth remembering his charitable activity, always carried out in his own stringent and private way, far from the spotlights. The very idea of developing a foundation, bequeathing his collection of masterpieces to the public, demonstrates his altruistic spirit.

The secluded villa in Rivoli, built in the mid-1960s, was a favourite of his, where he could devote himself to contemplating beauty. He opened it up twice a year to a restricted circle of friends so that they could visit the artistic heritage housed within it. Today the villa not only represents a legacy for the entire community, but also the realisation of an artistic and cultural ideal. Cerruti had a holistic vision of life, in which his path as a businessman and collector was linked to a common thread characterised by efficiency, precision and the quest for perfection and beauty - all elements that can be identified in his industrial production and in his choice of artworks and pieces of decorative art. Although he was self-taught, his extensive reading and visits to art exhibitions and galleries, such as Mario Tazzoli’s Galatea, enabled him to achieve such a level of sensibility and sophistication that he was able to converse with the most prestigious art critics and historians of the time, such as Federico Zeri and Maurizio Fagiolo dell’Arco. His network of acquaintances included worlds that seem distant and incapable of communicating, but were for him a source of energy that fuelled his unique and exceptional existence.

After a long illness, the accountant - Francesco Federico Cerruti - died in Turin on 15 July 2015.

Excerpt from the biography of Francesco Federico Cerruti written by Cristina Accornero for the Collection catalogue.