Fratelli Giannelli Copper Pendant Lamp

First of all, Fratelli Giannelli is not a lighting company, they only made the rise & fall mechanism.

Materials: Copper coloured round anodised aluminium lampshade, painted white inside. White painted iron & clear acrylic handle below. Bakelite E27 socket.

Cord: This one has an adjustable rise & fall mechanism (40 – 140 cm / 15.74 – 55.11″), and can be easily adjusted in height by pulling the acrylic bar underneath.

Height: 24,5 cm / 9.64”

Width: ∅ 32 cm / 12.59”

Electricity: 1 bulb E27, 1 x 75 watt maximum, 110/220 volt.
Any type of light bulb with an E27 screw base can be used. Not a specific one preferred.

Period: 1970s, 1980s – Mid-Century Modern.

Designer: To be appraised.

Manufacturer: Massive, Mortsel, Kontich and Wommelgem, Belgium – attributed.

Other versions: It is unknown if this Fratelli Giannelli copper pendant lamp exists in other versions. Probably they were made in several colours.

Fratelli Giannelli

Many lamps appear when you do a internet search on Fratelli Giannelli. All in a style that is not a style, typical for lamps produced by Massive, Belgium. They are all lamps that have the looks of other companies, but they are not. And most important: all the lamps you find have a Fratelli Gianelli rise & fall mechanism.

FG or Fratelli Giannelli (brothers Giannelli) was a rise & fall mechanism producer such as the better known Italian company Rolly. Both firms are long gone. In the 1980s the interest in the rise & fall lamps was over. The only company with that name to be found in the region is Gianagri S.n.c. Fratelli Giannelli. Today (2018) it is Saulina Srl; hotel Villa Saulina, some 25 km / 15,5 mi from Florence, the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany. It is unclear if they got anything to do with the former rise & fall mechanism producer.

Massive 

Massive was in origin a bronze foundry and they produced mainly candlesticks, crucifixes and chandeliers in Wilrijk near Antwerp, Belgium. The company was founded in 1926 by Pieter-Jozef De Jaeck. His son Eddy De Jaeck was responsible for the huge expansion of the company in the 1970s. But it were his sons, Piet and Jan De Jaeck who made Massive a true multinational. Thus, they moved production to Eastern Europe and China.

In the 1980s Massive became the leading brand in Europe. In 2002, the brothers left the company to the investment fund CVC Capital Partners, for allegedly more than 250 million euros. 
Since 2008 the company is owned by Philips and the name of the shops is changed into Light Gallery.

When the takeover by Philips was announced in November 2006 Massive commercialised more than 10.000 lighting products under brand names such as Massive, TRIO and Lirio. The group had about 5.000 employees worldwide and was active in 70 countries.

Acrylic: often named by its commercial name: Perspex, Plexiglas, Crylux, Acrylite, Lucite, is a thermoplastic.