Hello Steven,
Yes. Back in the early 80s a new club member showed up on one of our rides with one. If memory serves me well, he had a black and red Marastoni, the craftmanship was very clean and interestingly enough, it had a Campagnolo Nuovo GS groupo with lots of pantograhing. It was an extremely attractive bike. As I recall, he told me he purchased it in Rome. I think the book 'Agonistic Cycling' has a pic of a Marastoni (I think, I think.). If anyone has a copy handy they may want to comfirm this, as my copy is buried under skateboards, squirt guns and bmx bikes.
Regards, David Martinez Fremont Ca USA
Steven Maasland <themaaslands@comcast.net> wrote: Of all the bikes that I have had pass through my hands, there is one in particular that I regret having sold. The bike is a gold colored bike from the late 80s marked Marco Marastoni. The bike had incredibly clean workmanship and rode exceptionally well. Unfortunately I needed money to fund the purchase of another bike at the time so it was sold to Billy Rounds, who then sold it onwards to somebody else. Ever since then I have been on the lookout for another one in my size. I have since come across a few and have always been very impressed by the workmanship, I was also comforted by the fact that Dario Pegoretti lists a Marastoni bike among his personal collection of bikes, a collection that otherwise includes bikes by Masi, De Rosa and Milani (his father-in-law). Unfortunately, until recently, I never did seem to come across anything in my size. Imagine my surprise when I came across a lovely, fully original Marastoni bike from the first half of the 50s. The workmanship is definitely there, but I simply could not imagine it to be the same builder. A bit of investigative work told me that the builder was a certain Licinio Marastoni who worked out of Reggio Emilia, who had a son Marco. I thought mystery solved, Licinio had built my 50s bike and Marco had built the 80s bike. Wrong! It turns out that whereas Licinio had indeed passed on the framebuilding genes to his son, Marco was killed in a bad traffic accident in 1972 at the age of 28. It turns out that the loss of his son was so great that Licinio decaled all his bikes from that day onwards as Marco Marastoni. He also sponsored a memorial race, named for his son. So both the 50s and the 80s bikes are both the work of Licinio.
More detective work showed that Marastoni continued to build frames as a full-time occupation well into his 70s, until the 1990s (he was born in 1922 if my information is correct). Now, I have come across a newspaper article from IL RESTO DEL CARLINO from April 2000 that gives even more information. Apparently Licinio started as an apprentice framebuilder in 1933 as an 11 year-old (times sure have changed). His first job being that of filing lugs in the frame shop of Mattioli-Grasselli. In 1937, he moved onto actually building complete frames, but was then sidetracked with work for the Partisans in the war. Upon conclusion of the war, he set up his own shop in 1948 in partnership and with financing of his former employer Grasselli. In 1966, Grasselli retired and a new partner, Mazzoni, joined him. Beyond his framebuilding work, Marastoni was also active in racing in the Reggio Emilia area, both as racer and organizer. It was apparently one of Marastonis proudest days, when in 1971, both Licinio and Marco Marastoni were on the podium of the Ciano-Canossa time trial: Marco placing second amongst the amateurs and Licinio winning amongst the veterans.
Licinio Marastoni is still alive and well. I have passed on his contact details to Matteo Brandi, who has said that he will try to stop by the next time he passes through. I guess anybody who started framebuilding 75 years ago like Marastoni must have some great stories to tell, including about the work he did in developing lugs for Masi and Colnago.
Anybody else ever come across a Marastoni?
Steven Maasland
Moorestown, NJ
USA
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