This is a history of Cinelli bicycles after it was sold to Columbus tubing in 1979. Unfortunately, Cinelli products before 1979 are hardly mentioned. I briefly edited Human Power put out by the International Human Powered Vehicle Assoc. and was hoping more for a technical history of the Cinelli products that made the company great. Instead the book describes the bicycle as an artistic expression of engineering. As a cyclist, I was disappointed. I was also disappointed that a number of the photographs were blurred.
The book opens with a chatty exchange between Paul Smith, an English fashion designer and Antonio Colombo, son of the founder of Columbus tubing who now heads the company and who owns an art gallery. They both talk about how much they enjoy riding bicycles and designing things. Their discussion is about the process to include the beauty of function in what they design. Antonio had wanted to be an architect but decided to design Cinelli bicycles after Columbus tubing bought it in 1979. The first thing he did after taking over the company was to commission a re-design of the company logo. The first chapter is all about updating the graphic design and colors. The book is a history of Cinelli after Columbus bought it from Cino Cinelli. Design is based on the assumption that the whole product is greater than the sum of its parts. There is no discussion of metallurgy, engineering and no graphs or tables. Despite his omission Cino Cinelli was an interesting person.
The book does not mention a number of things I wanted to read about. Cino Cinelli was a professional bicycle racer from 1937-1944 and a champion who raced under the fascists during WWII and founded the Italian Professional Cycling Association. Though there are many photographs of Cinelli during his racing career all over the web the book has few photographs of Cino Cinelli's illustrious bicycle racing career. It does not mention that he won the Tour of the Arpennines in 1937, the Giro di Lombardia in 1938 & the Milan-San Remo in 1943. The book does not mention that his brother actually founded Cinelli, making handlebars and sponsoring a racing team while Cino raced. Concerned about bicycle failures and unable to interest manufacturers Cino joined his brother and began making handlebars in 1946, designing the Supercorsa in 1947. His colorful and expressive personality is not mentioned. Neither is what he did after selling the company or his passing in 2001 is not mentioned. While the flat fork crown was the standard the Supercorsa featured a unique full-sloping fork crown to stiffen the fork. The advance of the full-sloping crown is given a single page without mentioning that after its introduction that frame makers added stiffeners to flat fork crowns. Other fork developments such as Italian section fork blades or the 1 1/8" threadless fork columns are not mentioned. Other Cinelli developments such as his Bi-valent hubs, M71 pedals or the smaller wheels or very long crank-arms he advocated for bicycles are also not given space.
The book promotes bicycle design as an artistic expression much in the same way Ettore Bugatti designed cars. The book is printed by Rizzoli, who also publish coffee-table books on fashion. The book is heavy, weighing 4 1/2 lbs owing to the high clay content of the pages to reproduce a large number of photographs. A number of them are Man Ray-style artistic montages with drawings of wrapped presents or blocks of cheese being drawn on photographs of bicycle races or products. There is a surrealistic drawing of a moose wearing a raincoat riding a tandem with a single dice for a hat with a cut-out copper-plate image of someone on the seat behind him. There are no captions but a few are briefly described in the photographic credits. There are photographs of races showing speed and one of someone reaching out from the shadows to a pile of shiny stems. While there are a number of close-up pictures of bicycles instead of being crisp studio shots, a number of them are slightly out of focus. On pg.#168 a full half-page picture of a bicycle is so blurred you cannot read the name on the down-tube and only make out the CIN of the Cinelli on the top tube (this page is displayed on LOOK INSIDE). As a book of design, I was disappointed.
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