Soldier, have you Firmalampen in your pocket?

 

Firmalampen were first produced by workshops in the Po Valley in northern Italy. Broadly diffused since Flavian times in Gaul, Britain, Germany, and central European provinces, they were soon imitated and produced locally in these areas.

Firmalampen are scarce in southern provinces such as Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, Africa, and in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean. Out of sixty-four examples recorded in Algeria, only three seem to be imported north Italian products; the rest are locally made imitations, sometimes quite far from the original models.

Stamped names on Firmalampen are often seen as randomly distributed. This opinion originates in the assumption that Firmalampen are easy to copy and therefore it should not matter which name we read on the lamp. But is this really true? The distribution of names is not that much a random product but seems to have nameable reasons, Firmalampen-production as possibly connected with branch workshops of producers who started their business in Northern Italy.