Company
Our History
Memories of Franco Feree
The Cremonesi company has a long history, chronologically speaking, as its origins lie in the workshop located in the “Curt del Feree” in the historic center of Albignano d’Adda.
This is where Francesco Cremonesi, the founder, was born and raised in 1926.
It was here that his great-grandfather Gaspare (1832) moved from Inzago (MI) around 1850, when he was in his early twenties. He passed on his blacksmithing and farrier skills to his descendants, including his son Luigi (1864) and his grandson Cesare (1891), Francesco’s father. He also taught them how to repair plows and agricultural tools, and how to work wrought iron using the ancient wedge technique.
Francesco, known to his friends as Franco Feree, is the last descendant of the family to have practiced this profession, which he later abandoned to dedicate himself passionately, from the early 1950s, to the development of modern livestock farming that took him beyond his beloved horses.
Until the 1950s, customers paid the blacksmith once a year on St. Martin’s Day. From one November to the next, the accounts were kept on wooden sticks cut in half; one half was kept by the farmer, the other by the craftsman who wrote the name of the client on it. On this stick, the newly shoed horses were marked on one side and the repaired and replaced ones on the other.
On November 11th, the results were tallied, and there were never any disputes. The first complaints arose with the advent of agricultural machinery, for which spare parts were required.
Francesco purchased them from dealers and replaced them, but he could no longer afford to advance these expenses for an entire year. He then asked for half-yearly payments, sparking a half-revolution.
An important meeting
He then met engineer Carlo Astori, from Gorgonzola, who was building houses in the area and also considered building prefabricated stables, but needed someone to build the formwork, the mold for making the beams for the sheds.
Curious detail
An important meeting
He then met engineer Carlo Astori, from Gorgonzola, who was building houses in the area and was also considering building prefabricated stables, but needed someone to build the formwork, the mold for making the beams for the sheds.
And he turned to Cremonesi. He accepted. It’s 1957. He thus created the front mould for a 21.60 m arch, the first in Italy.
He had no shortage of ideas: using the fifth wheel of a tank, he built a very tall, self-propelled crane, before cranes of that type existed for lifting prefabricated buildings.
He then abandoned that innovative idea, which would later be used by others, to devote himself to finding solutions to the many problems facing farmers. Always cutting-edge solutions, which were patented and then became commonly used in livestock farming.
Having passed away in 2022 at the age of 96, Francesco never forgot his origins and his workshop; he often thought back to the bustle of life in that courtyard where the farmers, waiting for their horses to be shoed or their spades to be repaired, forged the relationships that form the foundation of a cohesive community proud of its traditions.
The friendly faces of those farmers remained etched in his memory.