J. Fiora was an Italian who is known to have been working from an address in Long Row, Nottingham, in 1814-1815.
The influx of Italians who came to England in the late 18th Century to set up as makers and retailers of barometers, telescopes, thermometers and spectacles, is described by Nicholas Goodision is his English Barometers 1680-1860, Woodbridge, rev. ed., 1977, p. 88. Such was their number that Goodison notes that 'by 1840 it is fair to say that they dominated the industry'.