Parole in libertà

Artist Cabaret Typographie

Title Parole in libertà

Year 2023

Technique 3-color letterpress printing from laser-cut MDF matrices

Format 50 x 70 cm

Paper Materica Gesso gr. 250

Print run 20 signed and numbered copies

Framed in white box frame

A few steps off Corso Lodi in Milan, a stationery and print shop has been open since 1909. Costante and Luigia Bonvini founded it as the neighbourhood's place for paper and ink. More than a century later, the original presses still run.

In 2014, a group of friends rescued the shop from disappearing, restoring it with architects who specialise in cultural heritage. The machines - a 19th-century platen press, an Imperial Cylinder Press, a Heidelberg Stella - were returned to working order.

Bonvini 1909 is now part print shop, part gallery, part cultural institution. Every piece carries the particular character that only a hand-fed press can produce - the slight variation, the impression in the paper, the evidence of a human hand.