Gatto Vestacrom Prototype (Lot)

The company Gatto Cav. Antonio emerged from the decentralisation of Officine Galileo S.p.A. during the war. The first Sonne cameras were produced around 1947/48, until Gatto ceased production in the mid 1950's. The last project, the Vestacrom 35 mm rangefinder camera, a Leica copy similar to the Sonne C4, of which only a few prototypes were made and of which no complete example is known to us to this day, never reached production. The offered lot consists of two Vestacrom aluminium body castings, one in chrome finish, marked Vestacrom with pencil on the back, with a Schneider Xenar 50 mm f/3.5 lens barrel (without optics or a diaphragm), the other one in black finish, as well as a Schneider Xenon 50 mm f/2 cut-away with optics and diaphragm. Included: Two glass plates showing a completed Vestacrom prototype from front and back, each ca. 6,3 x 8,9 cm.