An event in partnership with the Tallone publishing house. Featuring a Q&A with Elisa and Eleonora Tallone

Screening of: Il mestiere del libro [The Book Handicraft] (2007, 31 min.) In Italian with English subtitles

In the digital age, the visual and tactile delights experienced by reading books set by hand in type fonts of great beauty and printed on hand-made papers, has never been so well celebrated as it is in a unique series of four volumes concerning the aesthetics of the book, by worldwide-famous Tallone printer, which contain original printed examples from the Thirties, and paper samples and watermarks dating back to the last six centuries – from those made at the time of Johannes Gutenberg and Aldus Manutius, to the Batchelor's Kelmscott paper created for William Morris, and those skillfully made by the most illustious paper makers from the early twentieth century to the present.

The daunting task of collecting all this material within the covers of the four Manuali Tipografici, each printed in some 300 copies, has been possible due to the centuries-old history of the Tallone typographic studio, described in the documentary The book handicraft (subtitled in English), which will be shown at Casa Italiana together with the precious contents of the Manuali, in a unique journey through the aesthetics of original type fonts, accumulated over the centuries and still in use, and six centuries of papers and fascinating watermarks.

Source: http://www.casaitaliananyu.org/