Help with ID? F.A.C.A.L.

I found this painted tile trivet in a thrift store today - I find endless uses for trivets - but I can't find out anything about the maker. The mark reads FACAL Made in Italy but in the very few other listings online for this maker, it's written as F.A.C.A.L. Does anyone know about this maker? It looks kind of 70s to me but I don't know.

 

I've never seen anything marked 'dishwasher safe only'. Does this mean you can't hand wash?

 

lol I think it means only dishwasher safe, as opposed to microwave and dishwasher safe

 

Or maybe it means you can't eat off it, not food safe. Just kidding. You're probably correct. Shows what I know about modern kitchen & table ware.

 

haha I won't be eating off of it either way

 

FACAL would most likely be an acroymn. F often stands for fabbrica or factory. Oh, this could be it. A small ceramics factory in Montelupo Florentino outside of Florence. And if yours is marked anything to do with dishwasher, ain't going to be very old.

https://www.impresaitalia.info/mstd...anti-oreste-e-c-snc/montelupo-fiorentino.aspx

Debora

 

Small point. Some pottery and china in the UK has been marked dishwasher and/or detergent safe since the fifties. So it might be a bit older, especially with EU regs.

 

Not meant intent to contradict you but... I would say in my experience I've only seen dishwasher language in the last few decades.

Debora

 

It shows up here on things like fifties blue and white transferware, for example. My surmise was it was done for export, but who knows. The typical phrasing is something like detergent and dishwasher safe. Not sure if I've got an example readily to hand.

 

Interesting. According to the internet, dishwashers only became commercially accepted for domestic use in the 1950s (being purchased by the wealthy only) but by the 1970s were commonplace.

Debora

 

They were pretty unusual, but my best friend had one. Or at least, her mother did. That would have been mid sixties.

Freezers were way more popular before dishwashers, certainly. And dishwashers still aren't as pervasive here: it's only about half of households. More people have coffee machines, and almost everyone has a microwave. (Yes, went down the statistics rabbit hole, and it backed up my perception.)

So I still don't know why some stuff had the marking so early!

 

Thank you so much! This is the first lead I've had on it