The San Francisco Bay Area has been fortunate to host several events highlighting the notable work of Italy’s prestigious publishing house, Tallone Fine Print Books.
January 31 through February 11, 2017, San Francisco State University’s Frank V. de Bellis Collection, in collaboration with the San Francisco Italian Consulate General and the Italian Cultural Institute, presented a mini-exhibit of Tallone Fine Print Books at the J. Paul Leonard Library.
On February 1, the Italian Cultural Institute hosted a special presentation and reception with Elisa and Eleonora Tallone. Elisa and Eleonora are the granddaughters of Alberto Tallone, who, in the early part of the 20th century, purchased type and equipment made in the 18th century in order to create hand-set books.
February 5 through February 8, Elisa and Eleonora participated in the 2017 CODEX Book Fair and Symposium held at the Craneway Pavilion in Richmond, California. The CODEX Foundation was conceived in 2005 by Peter Rutledge Koch, fine press printer, and Susan Filter, paper conservator. Its purpose was to create an environment for promoting the book as a work of art.
In March 2017, the Italian Academy of Columbia University will hold an event marking the donation by Alexander Goren, of an almost complete collection of books printed by the Tallones to the Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Columbia University.
And recently, L’Italo-Americano met Elisa and Eleonora at San Francisco’s Italian Consulate, a meeting that was hosted by Consul General Lorenzo Ortona. Eleonora Tallone shared the philosophy of Tallone: “Our present-day publishing house, where everything is preserved authentically, exactly as it was when our studio was founded in France at the epoch of the French Revolution, and our determination in upholding the tradition of fine printing, go hand in hand. It was in fact in the XVI (16th) century that the Book reached its peak in terms of Beauty, Harmony and Readability. Keeping up with this deeply-rooted tradition is, therefore, pursuing Beauty.”
An example of this philosophy can be seen in Paris at the Viale dei Canti, Alley of Poetry, which takes visitors to the Hôtel de Gallifet, the venue of the Italian Cultural Institute and the Italian Embassy. The Viale’s surrounding walls are engraved with poems in Tallone type, originally called “Palladio,” a type that was designed by Alberto Tallone in 1949 inspired by the architecture of Villa Barbaro Maser, one of Palladio’s masterpieces.
Alberto Tallone (1898-1968), the son of the renowned painter Cesare, head professor of painting at the Brera Academy in Milan, was the apprentice at Maurice Darantiere’s prestigious typographic studio in Châtenay-Malabry (near Paris) from 1931 to 1937. In 1938, Tallone founded his own publishing and printing house in Paris by taking over the studio from Darantiere, and enriching the existing collection of types (pieces of metal with a raised letter or character on its upper surface used in printing) by adding classic fonts, which included the Tallone® font designed by Alberto and punch-cut in Paris by Charles Malin in 1949.
Alberto moved the studio home to Italy in 1960. His goal of combined aesthetic and editorial truth has been pursued since the 1970s by his son Enrico, in collaboration with his children, resulting in a diverse catalog of some 400 works, ranging from Greek pre-Socratic philosophers to contemporary poets in a multiplicity of languages and book formats.
The unmistakable design of Tallone books is characterized by a unique typographic architecture and is renowned worldwide for the quality of the printing, the relevance of the works published, the elegant layouts, the slender book formats, the exclusiveness of the typefaces derived from hand-cut punches, the pure-cotton papers and the precious papers made in China and Japan, which endure through the centuries.
The volumes are hand bound by stitching sections together and gluing them to a softcover which is beautifully wrapped to the book thus preserving the book’s flexibility. Each is typeset by hand and letterpress printed in its original language, to a new typographic design, thus creating a unique “book-diversity,” a trademark continued today at the Tallone printing and publishing house.
The Tallones describe their books in this way: “The fine books letterpress-printed by the Tallone publishing-printing house are entirely set by hand with original type fonts of great beauty, derived from the punches cut directly by artists such as Nicholas Kis (1650-1702), William Caslon (1693-1766) and, during the last century, Henri Parmentier and Charles Malin, which convey to letterpress printing a visual appeal and communicative strength similar to that of calligraphy, an achievement which elevates the experience of reading books.”
Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet and Nobel Prize winner for Literature, once called Alberto Tallone a “master of clarity, professor of purity, hero of the book. These qualities are also found in his son Enrico, who has headed the printing house since 1973. The printing house is now located in Alpignano, Torino, Italy, where Enrico is supported by his children Lorenzo, Elisa and Eleonora. Tallone Fine Print Books continues to create outstanding gems in the publishing sector, books which are described as “fragrant with ink and passion.”
You can explore Tallone Fine Print Books at their website, http://www.talloneeditore.com.
A description of all the type styles that compose the collection of the Tallone Printing House is available at http:// www.talloneeditore.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=55&I…
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