Printing and bookbinding - Piemonte Feel

Who do we owe for the ease with which we write text messages on our cell phones? Who should take the credit for the fact that the written word, after all, keeps on being the basis of internet communication as it is transmitted even through the air? Who should we thank for our obvious pleasure – all of us who keep on loving the smell of the pages of a book that has just been opened and who read at night relaxing in our armchairs? Really, it is Gutenberg whom we should thank. His moveable-type press officially “invented” printing in the fifteenth century.
Reproducing texts and images through printing has still remained one the fundamental means for the communication of knowledge and social development. This activity, when it reaches the heights of refinement, can be termed “graphic art.” In fact, the Piedmont Region has recognized its own galaxy of 50 printers with its official Mark of Craft Excellence, including typographies, handicraft printers and bookbinders that continue to distribute the “word on paper.”
This antique world keeps on living in Piedmont even though today the old printing presses are often flanked by state-of-the-art digital technology. This is world where the pleasures of the text begins with the physical book, a work of art that opens up the universe of the senses just as music does, except that music’s notes and pauses here become letters and blanks. There are books to be “tasted” and paper to be felt with one’s fingers.
There is the clarity and the incision – sometimes a bit in relief – of the printed letters to be observed. The Mondovì Printing Museum holds a collection including precious hand-sewn bamboo paper, moveable type characters cast from lead or carved in wood, printing machines and equipment, and antique typographic work benches. However, there are presses for art-etching as well as machines for processing, page-gathering, folding, and sewing that all live on in the editions of the Tipografia d’arte Tallone in Alpignano. Meanwhile, strictly hand-sewn notebooks, albums, and paper for correspondence and invitations are the pride of the Legatoria Artistica e Restauro Umberto I in Turin. The Caramotti workshop in Fossano specializes in fine canvas and leather to go with Indian paper. Fiore D’oro in Cuneo features hand-decorated canvas and paper ranging from the antique to the most modern times as well as etchings.
Over half a millennium has passed since October 24, 1472, when the first book in Piedmont, Antonino di Firenze’s Il Confessionale, was printed by Antonius Mathiae and Baldasar Corderius. Yet, this tradition is still alive. All this should remind us that besides the galaxy of the mass media there is still the pleasure of a “slow read.”