Imprinting, the memory of paper

A book that restores to print its value as both art and knowledge. “Imprinting”, the volume published by Grafiche Antiga on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the Tipoteca Italiana, is both a book and an experience: a tactile and visual journey through the materiality of paper and the infinite possibilities of print. Every sheet is a sensitive surface, fragile yet resilient, where the mark becomes memory. With its 188 pages and 17 original out-of-text inserts, “Imprinting” not only celebrates graphic art but its continuity over time, like a line that connects artists, printers, and designers in a shared alphabet. Each copy, numbered from 1 to 1500, preserves unrepeatable fragments - historical papers, engravings, typographic prints - making each edition a unique piece, impossible to replicate.



The sections of the volume form a kind of atlas of printing: from handmade paper to woodcut, from intaglio to classical typography, up to lithography, screen printing, and digital printing. Each technique is accompanied by a tangible example, crafted by masters such as Mardersteig, Tallone, Emilio Vedova, Lorenz Boegli - witnesses of a visual culture that still today blends invention with discipline, intuition with craftsmanship.



The publication coincides with the anniversary of the Tipoteca Italiana, the cultural center founded by Grafiche Antiga in 1995 to promote typographic culture and to preserve, in the digital age, the value of a heritage rooted in paper, ink, and type. “Imprinting” is also an act of resistance: a book that reaffirms the centrality of materiality in the age of the immaterial.



Among fibers, inks, and type, we rediscover the beauty of making and the slowness of manual thought - the dialogue between tradition and innovation that the Tipoteca has safeguarded and renewed for thirty years. Each page thus becomes an invitation to rediscover the depth of looking and thinking: because only what leaves an imprint truly continues to exist.