Biordi Art Imports: The First 60 Years

A 60-year anniversary sounds like a simple thing: 1946-2006.

Biordi Art Imports is currently celebrating 60 years in business, as a unique and remarkable ceramics gallery on Columbus Avenue in San Francisco's North Beach district.

Emilio Biordi founded the store in 1946. Then, in 1977, Gianfranco Savio bought and expanded the store.

In America today, Biordi means Maiolica – the beautiful glazed ceramics first brought to Italy from the island of Majorca.

Biordi is nationally-renowned as a showplace for fine Italian ceramics that's as much a museum as a successful business and unique presence in North Beach.

In the 8th Century, Spain was occupied by the Moors who knew how to glaze ceramics and the craft took hold in Majorca. By the 12th Century the merchants of the Italian city-state of Pisa began importing these beautifully shaped and colorfully glazed ceramics. Demand spread fast and Majorca, the name of the island where the wares were made, soon morphed into “Majolica.”

Italy’s Renaissance artisans and artists eventually learned how to make these beautiful ceramics too. Later, exports shipped over the Alps were being called “faience” from Faenza, Italy’s principal exporter of the wares. “Majolica” is still the name Italians use, but for the French and much of the rest of the world it’s called “faience”.

Nine centuries later, and 60 years ago, Majolica reached North Beach, the Italian community which then was very different from the touristic area of today. In many ways, North Beach in 1946 was an Italian village within the city limits, recalls renowned San Francisco historian Alessandro Baccari. The people who lived in North Beach also worked in North Beach—and Italian was spoken everywhere.

A well-educated man from the Abruzzi region east of Rome, Emilio Biordi, had settled in San Francisco long before he decided to start a business importing Majolica. His brother Raffaello, who was a famous art critic in Rome, helped choose many articles Emilio imported when, in 1946, he opened his business at 412 Columbus Avenue in North Beach. “It was a time when shopping in North Beach was a delightful experience,” says Mr. Baccari.

While Emilio was building Biordi as a business importing ceramics from Italy, in Florence, the young Italian who would eventually become his successor, was absorbing the glorious Renaissance art and architecture of his native Florence. In 1974, with a diploma in political sciences Gianfranco Savio arrived in San Francisco to join his new bride. He taught Italian at Holy Names University in Oakland and then worked for an Italian bank, but he longed for a career that connected more intimately with Italian culture.

In late 1977, he heard that Biordi's art import business was for sale. “I already loved the store,” Gianfranco recalls. “Emilio was 75 by then, ready to retire.”

Gianfranco Savio and Emilio Biordi discovered a kindred spirit. For a full year after Gianfranco bought the store, its founder put in eight hours a day, every day, commuting from Marin County to help his new friend renew his old business.

At the time, Biordi’s store was selling a broad range of products. Beautiful ceramics shared shelf space with espresso machines, ravioli cutters, rolling pins and pasta machines. Many beautiful pieces had been hidden away for years in almost inaccessible nooks and corners, but Gianfranco felt sure there was more of a long-term market for Italian art than for Italian house wares.

Before he could sell ceramic art, however, he needed to find artists to make it. He started in Tuscany and Umbria, and ranged as far as Palermo, Abruzzi, Rome, and Faenza.

“In ceramics towns like Deruta, I was going from door to door,” he recalls, “seeking anyone in town who made exceptional ceramics. On one trip I put more than 5,000 miles on my rental car in three weeks. Once back in Rome, the rental people were in shock.”

Of the artists eventually found, he says, “You can count the really important ones on one hand. These are the three or four artists, or families, we depend on a lot. One of the best known is Cama, a family concern in Deruta owned by Elena and Renato Niccacci. They specialize in the classic Majolica dinnerware which probably accounts for 30 percent of Biordi's sales today.”

Eugenio Ricciarelli, Francesca Niccacci, Franco Mari, and De Simone—all fascinating artists who have reinterpreted classic designs in a modern way—also work with Biordi.

Thanks, in no small part, to Gianfranco’s support, the fine art Majolica tradition in Italy is thriving today. (To begin appreciating the artists and their distinct styles, click here to request a beautiful Biordi's catalog).

“All our ceramics stand in the classic Italian Renaissance tradition,” Gianfranco explains. “In this tradition, we sell two categories of Majolica. One class consists of our decorative accessories, a unique line you won’t see in other stores, not even in Italy. Some of it has been created at the suggestions of our customers: biscotti jars, garlic jars, certain kinds of utensils, and so on. Our other category is unusual dinnerware of exceptional artistic quality. Art is about reinterpretation and execution. And I have a well-trained eye. I want to offer my customers a ceramic piece that they will never regret buying, a piece with love in it. That’s really what you see in many aspects of Italian life: in the way we cook, in the way we style clothing, in the way we maintain certain traditions. That’s what you see in Biordi’s ceramics.

“Over the years,” says Gianfranco, “I’ve established a connection, a bond, with these artists that goes beyond a business relationship, one that feels very much like family. I help them a lot of times when they’re in financial trouble, I advance funds when they start an order, I send potential wholesale customers to them from other parts of the country, we share a meal when I’m in Italy. From San Francisco we’ve contributed to the survival of these artists, and of this art form."

The official proclamation from the City of San Francisco celebrating Biordi Art Imports’ 60th anniversary recognizes that Gianfranco Savio and his ceramics gallery have played a seminal role in the artistic and cultural development of San Francisco and its North Beach district. That’s to say the least.