1925 Within months of Jean’s birth, Peter and Zeppa travelled home to Italy with their daughters. Primarily, it was a business trip. The brothers never returned to Italy without scouting for talented craftsmen who might be persuaded to move to Australia.

Commonwealth Savings Bank

This time, however, Peter was more specifically looking for a craftsman skilled in the old Italian art of scagliola which he and Tony felt was the only technique that would fit the architects’ requirements for the work they had been commissioned to undertake on the new Government Savings Bank building in Martin Place.

 

Glaria circa 1920

 

 

Zeppa and the two girls spent six months in Toppo while Peter travelled throughout Italy and the United States. He found no one who could help him in Italy. An artisan with some experience of the material was located in America and later brought to Australia, however his craftsmanship was deemed insufficient and it fell ultimately to Tony to perfect the Melocco Brothers formula.

 

While Peter was in Toppo he managed also to persuade his mother to move to Australia. Her husband, Giovanni Battista, had died many years previously in 1906 and all three brothers had decided their mother would be more comfortable with them in Sydney. Business had increased substantially in the early part of the 1920s and they felt confident of their ability to support her comfortably.