A.I.C.C. The Italian Corkscrew Collector’s Club
Paolo de Sanctis and Maurizio Fantoni founded the Club in Milano on 17th of December, 1988. The Club’s aim is to advance and strengthen the fellowship among its members through education. The Club is non-profit and apolitical and only accepts amateurs as members, who collect corkscrews and similar implements. Traders and antique dealers are excluded from membership.
The first president was Paolo de Sanctis (1989), a very serious collector. He has also co-authored with Maurizio Fantoni three picture filled books on corkscrews. Roberto Gabbani was elected president in 1991.
From 1993 to 1999 Piero Giacomini was the president of the Club. He is a businessman from Brescia, who founded the “Wine and Corkscrew Museum”, one of the most prestigious of its kind in the World. He also was author and co-ordinator of the review “Il Cavatappi” (the “Corkscrew”), the six monthly periodical of the A.I.C.C., with two issues in 1999. During his presidency and with the secretariat of Ottilia Munaretti Bertazzo, the A.I.C.C. built up a very organised and functional structure, becoming one of the most active Clubs of its kind in the world. At the club members’ meeting held at Venice on 19th of November 1999 Maurizio Fantoni was elected President, Renato Nicolai Secretary, and Franco Faccio Treasurer.
Two members’ meetings are held each yer by the A.I.C.C. to increase the dissemination of useful information, study and research. One of these meetings are held in the Fall in Venice, the other in the Spring in different regions of Italy.
The president’ job it to promote/suggest studies on and presentations about corkscrew related topics. The president also organises an important corkscrew auction every year, to which collectors of other nationalities are invited. In 1997 the Swedish collectors, Buster Berntson and Per Ekman, auctioned off 95 Danish corkscrews. In 1999 collectors from Germany were invited. Only members of the A.I.C.C. can participate in the auction and the Club charges a 10% commission to the seller.
A number of A.I.C.C. members are also members of the ICCA (International Correspondence of Corkscrew Addicts), among these are Paolo de Sanctis, Piero Giacomini and Guy Olive from France. The ICCA is a world-wide association set up in 1974, with membership limited to 50 people. It has inspired the founding of other clubs: the A.I.C.C., the Club Français du Tire-bouchon, the German Club (Verein Korkenzieherfreunde), the Scandinavian club (Helix Scandinavica), and the oldest of these clubs, the Canadian Corkscrew Collectors Club with almost 300 members from all over the world.
Currently the A.I.C.C. has 31 members: 11 in Lombardy, 17 in other regions of Italy, a Swiss and two French.
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