17 January, 2011

Louis Lambretti



A few months ago I photographed a stamp by Louis Lambretti in Mill Valley, and yesterday I heard from his grandson Rick, who gave me a little more information about Louis and sent along these amazing pictures of his original brass stamp. Pretty cool!

According to Rick, Louis Lambretti

"... emigrated from Italy in the early 1900's, settled in MV and started his business. He also built stone bridges in the Napa valley and laid sidewalks all over Marin and Sonoma Counties. Unfortunately not many remain. He and his wife built a home at 275 E. Blithedale and raised four sons there. The stone retaining wall surrounding the property was built by him and is still standing over 100 years later, without a single crack in it!

...notice the dings on the back? Quite often the cement was a little too hard and we had to beat on it to set the imprint. FYI - the stamp weighs in excess of 9 lbs!"

2 comments:

Andrew Alden, Oakland Geology blog said...

How cool!

Anonymous said...

nice i live in mv since the '94 and had often wondered who mr lambretti was. his sidewalk stamp can still be easily found here in the flats. and he lived a few blocks away from me now. thank u for posting this!