The next best thing to being in Italy might very well be spending time with Russell Maret’s Medieval in Padua, a molto bello letterpress, eight color, 44-page fine press book devoted to Romanesque and ornamental Gothic inscriptions found throughout this ancient city near Venice. Maret, an expert printer, introduces a new digital cut of Baskerville’s Great Primer typeface for the text along with 16 pages of plates of typographic inscriptions. It ain’t cheap ($260 including shipping) but at least it ain’t Euros, and it’s worth every penny. So order here.
Maret started printing while a poetics student at the New College of California and apprenticed with Peter Koch in Berkeley, California. In Boston, Maret worked as associate printer, Monotype caster and chief Linotype caster of Firefly Press until settling in New York where he started his own press.
For information about Maret’s earlier letterpress work click here.