Richter & Co was established in 1842 by a Swiss printer, to produce chromolithographs in Naples. After the unification of Italy, Richter became a supplier to the royal household, specializing in several fields including the printing of bank notes. Around the turn of the century Mario Borgoni, a then young artist, started doing graphic work for the company.

By the end of the XIX century Richter was printing promotional items for commercial ventures. Some clients were hotels and soon Richter was designing and printing all sorts of paper items for the burgeoning Italian hotel industry. The first hotel labels were issued in 1900.

By 1906 Mario Borgoni had become Richter's artistic director and the company was managing the graphic image of hotels all over Italy. The business soon expanded to most European countries, North Africa and the Middle East (Richter's work for Egyptian hotels is particularly noteworthy), the Far East, and even the Americas.

Mario Borgoni was Richter's most influential graphic designer. His work is rarely signed but is often distinguishable by the masterly treatment of the human figure and the setting of scenes against an early morning or late afternoon sky.  Some signed Borgoni posters were reduced for use as labels and these carry his monogram, the letters “Mbi” inside a circle with an arabesque.

The other noteworthy Richter artist signs his label designs with a monogram made up of varying stylized versions of the letters “JNP” and has been identified as French postcard and graphic artist J.Paschal.  Paschal seems to have worked under Borgoni’s direction, from whom he borrowed the style, from the early 1900s to, at least, the late 1920s.

Borgoni left Richter in 1930, at the time when the shock waves of the Wall Street crash of 1929 started hitting the European hotel industry. His departure marks the end of the Golden Age of hotel luggage labels. During the 1930s Richter was reduced to issuing worsening reeditions of earlier designs and much inferior original work. After the war Richter re-issued some earlier designs together with utterly uninteresting, albeit new, photographic labels before disappearing in the early 1950s.

Richter's signature varied during the half century of its activity as a label printer, and a knowledge of its evolution can come handy. The earliest signed Richter labels sport the mark "Richter & C” and this was used from about 1900 to the middle 1920s, coexisting with several alternate forms. Yet, the occurrence of early, anonymous, Italian labels with lettering in the Richter style suggests that the very first labels by this printer may have not been signed. In the early 1900s (and for a few years only) a number identifying the design was used associated with Richter's signature. At about the same time, the signature "Lit. Richter & C" was occasionally used until it was superseded by "Stab. Richter & C", used from about 1907 to 1914. After the First World War, only the old "Richter & C" seems to have been used for a number of years.

It was customary for printers to freely copy designs from other printers whenever customers desired to reprint an old label. On November 1925 a law was passed in Italy to protect all graphic designs against copying, and in the late 1920s Richter's labels started to include a note to that effect: "Riproduzione vietata" ("Reproduction forbidden" sometimes in the language of the country where the hotel was located). Finally, in the 1930s, there were some changes to the type of society, so that after circa 1935 the signature used was "S.A. Richter & C" replaced a few years later by "S.p.a. Richter & C" which was used from just before the war until the last years of the company.

Mario Borgoni was an extraordinary and versatile graphic artist. His mastery of the human figure was remarkable indeed, his rendering of light was superb and his designs were colorful and gay in the Art Nouveau style. However his graphic solutions were sometimes unimaginative (in no small measure because he limited himself to strict realism) and whenever his work did not center around a main figure he seemed at difficulty to offer the viewer a focal point. Above all, Mario Borgoni was and remained primarily a  poster artist. His known labels are invariably posters reduced in scale and the fact that they were not designed as labels is apparent: Borgoni's treatment of detail and light in the large lithographic posters is impossible to render, by the same technique, at the reduced scale of a label. So, his labels are either reproduced photographically from posters and printed by the four color process, or else they may be lithographed but only at the cost of a major loss in graphic quality.

Poster by Mario Borgoni.

The other graphic artist known to have designed luggage labels for Richter was J.Paschal. As Borgoni was Richter's "poster man", Paschal was probably their "label man". I know of no poster designed by him and his habit of signing labels suggests that he might not have anything more noteworthy to sign. Paschal's penciling of the human figure and animals was mediocre, but he excelled in the representation of scenic views or buildings with a minimal choice of colors. Also he was not particularly limited by realism, although his labels suggest that his earlier, somewhat abstract, personal style may have been quickly curbed by Borgoni, under whom he worked.

Notice J.Paschal's limited penciling skills (label at right) when compared with an unknown artist, probably Mario Borgoni, on the treatment of the "man and his camel" theme. Paschal's label also illustrates the negative consequences of the lack of a strong central focus of attention

Really great Richter labels (please remember that this is just my opinion) are to be found amidst the earlier editions of the printer (typically from before 1910). The best designs center around a strong main motif, are often dark but not in excess (many of Paschal's otherwise fine labels are so dark as to loose detail and suffer in consequence of that) and make use of a very limited number of colors.
See the following examples---
 

Above, left: one of the earliest Richter labels in a graphic style not found later (the volcano and smoke are printed in gold and are not properly reproduced by the scanner); right: one of the earliest labels signed by J.Paschal (notice, in white, one of the early forms of his monogram). The label shows a rare departure from realism and an unusual freedom in the positioning of lettering. Below, two superb early Richter labels by J.Paschal. Notice his fully developed monogram.

  Above, left: very early label by J.Paschal (notice his early monogram at lower left and the unusual lettering, quite unlike later Richter designs). Besides white and black, the label at center uses only two more colors while each of the others uses only three more colors with quite stupendous results..
Below: Three more early labels by J.Paschal making minimal use of color varieties.