
Pizza cutter handmade exotic tropical wood frame carved in form of a Bellanca Type A airfoil designed by G. Bellanca; Koa wood stand. 1916.
Lot 1003 Circa 1912-1916
Lot 1003 is offered by a private collector and is purported to be from the family estate of Giuseppe Mario Bellanca, the Italian-American aviation pioneer, aircraft designer and builder. Born in Sicily in March of 1886, He emigrated to Brooklyn, NY in 1911, where he founded and operated the Bellanca Flying School from 1912 through 1916.
Bellanca was certainly familiar with sfincione the Sicilian style pizza he ate as a child, but he developed a passion for the derivative “Brooklyn" style pizza which has an extremely thin, crispy crust with toppings extended all the way to the edge.
Being an inventive and innovative engineer, Bellanca designed and created this pizza slicer specifically to cut through the delicate crust without displacing the toppings. It is speculated that the form of this special slicer was influenced by the outline of the ribs used in the “lifting struts” in his patented wide-chord Bellanca A airfoil.
Aviation lore has it that he may have used this slicer to cut the pizza served at a business lunch attended by the Wright Brothers when Bellanca worked for a brief time at Wright Aeronautical.