Book Notes in English

On the occasion of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the birth of the greatest Italian type designer, Gian Battista Bodoni, the Edizioni Valdonega completed the fasimile edition of CIMELIO TIPOGRAFICO which is a unicum and is preserved in a French library and practically unknown.

This edition now allows a larger public the pleasure of admiring this work of art. With the Cimelio, the great Parmesan printer wished to pay homage to Marie Luise and Napoleon in 1811, for the birth of their son, the King of Rome, and it is easy to imagine what care Bodoni took in the realisation of such a gift.

Poems by Gherardo de’ Rossi are inserted in frames on every page and are composed in different typefaces and point sizes to make all the poems fit inside the fixed space. From this point of view, the volume is like a manual, the last one Bodoni printed. The 41 engravings are by Texeira and Rosaspina and were especially coloured by hand by the Parmesan Antonio Pasini, as a tribute to the royal couple.

This perfect facsimile was produced using special processes in order to recreate precisely the characteristics of the original. Great care was taken in the selection of materials to guarantee maximum durability and quality of the work. The authors of the Commentary are Angelo Ciavarella, director of the Bodoni Museum in Parma, Corrado Mingardi, librarian and scholar of Bodoni, James Mosley, director of the Saint Bride Library in London, international expert on the history of typography, Bernard Chevallier, director of the Musée de la Malmaison, and the Publisher. The commentary is available in Italian, English and German.

Format: 26 x 38 cm; Facsimile of 176 pages and commentary of 80 pages with 26 illustrations. The 41 plates in the facsimile are printed in 8 colours by offset and the Bodonian typefaces in letterpress.

All leather binding with gold tooling. The texts in the commentary volume are composed in Dante and printed in letterpress, the illustrations in offset and the binding is hardback in special shagreened paper. The facsimile and commentary are held in an elegant slipcase covered in shagreened paper and stamped in gold.

Vol. I: Facsimile; Vol. II: Commentary by various authors.