2ndcupoftea

I blame Hugh Grant. He is virtually singlehandedly responsible for costing my friend a fair sum today. As a tour guide, often of middle aged American women, his immense appeal has become all too obvious to me. Many a time has it been pointed out to me, probably the second Brit many of them have ever met, that I ‘sound like him’ (yes that would be ‘English’ I explain) but ‘don’t quite look like him’ (and that would be because not every Englishman looks like a Hollywood movie star). And so the comparison ends in disappointment on both parts. I can deal with it. Just. However, watching the pheromones positively ooze off even his personal business card and prompt my young, beautiful, South American travel companion to delve so deep into her pockets, was even by his mesmerising standards, impressive.

For it was nothing less than this, Hugh Grant’s personal business card, his name perfectly placed beneath a proud winged lion of St Mark, displayed for the catching of eagled eyes, that ended up costing her dearly.

A small window in Calle del Fumo, Venice, Italy, the street of smoke, near the Fondamente Nove vaporetto stop, easily missed, yet virtually the only face of a virtually forgotten world; the ‘stamparia’ or printers of Gianni Basso and his son Stefano. Forgotten that is to most modern stationary users, but not it appeared to the hundred or so personalities from around the globe, who had evidently chosen to represent themselves or their business with something just a little special. The ‘display’ in the tiny window was olde-worlde, cards appearing haphazardly, presumably as they had been ordered. We entered and stepped back 300 years in time. Unbelievable.

“Wow, incredible”, says Mr Basso, placing the words in my mouth as I wander around, completely lost for them. “That’s what everyone says; wow, incredible!”. Gianni, whose English is exactly as good as he has decided it to be, switches into Italian, “vanno matti per questo”, they go crazy for this. He picks up and shows us a random selection of the hundreds, thousands of business cards he has printed in his thirty five years of running his business. His workshop, no more than one and half rooms, is filled with ancient printing machines, on which he carries on the dying ‘art’ as he describes it. In selecting these cards, he momentarily abandons a special edition of Pinocchio, two copies of which he is printing and then posting to two of Angelina Jolie’s children.

Now I have never had a business card, but as luck would have it literally two nights previously had a dream that I needed one (yes, I know, but show me he who is master of his dreams). I had decided that upon returning to the UK, I’d seek out, presumably the nearest Rymans and get a quote. I knew no different. Then it happened. Mr Grant’s card still firmly in her hands, my friend whispered to me that she’d like to make me the early, very early, birthday present of a set of these cards. I immediately refused, thinking that she’d need to mortgage her backpack just to afford the paper, but agreed to enquire of the price. I have no idea what business cards costs, but for the sheer beauty that is Gianni’s work, the figure he showed me was certainly fair.

And so it was that three days later, literally shaking, I took possession of one of the world’s most beautiful business cards. Two hundred to be precise. “How did you know I’d just this second finished?” said Gianni, as I turned up a day early, actually just to check on progress and photograph the card in the window that had started the whole affair. In between together we’d had the design session. What pure fun! Almost worth the fee alone. From his vast archive, he pulls down boxes and boxes of cards. Suddenly lions, bicycles, lighthouses, dragons, bookworms, teeth, umbrellas, camels spring off the paper and in an almost fantasia-esque atmosphere begin a merry dance where fonts, typeset, colours and paper types, whirl around until you’re spinning. When you leave, in my case after an hour or so, it’s almost in a daze and you think back trying to recall exactly what it was you chose.

Gianni, who calls himself a descendant of Gutenberg, started printing at the age of 15 on the San Lazzaro island. ‘In the 16th Century Venice was the European capital of printing’, he says. The mechanical movable printing methods he uses are thought to have been invented around 1439 by Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany. However shortly after with the establishment of the Aldine Press to which we owe italics, in Venice, the focus shifted to the Serene Republic and the Northern Italian lagoon. ‘What the world is today it owes to Gutenberg’, said Mark Twain. More than a century later, Gianni and his workshop are the epitome of the ordinary which has become extraordinary. To me Gianni and perhaps even more so, his son, Stefano – a graduated marine biologist, who has decided to follow in his fathers footsteps, are the true heroes of history.

Stephen Bailey recently wrote; ‘Few things are more exciting than to hear a woman breathlessly say; you have lovely handwriting’. He was waxing lyrical about the much neglected romantic ‘tool’, the fountain pen and its potential as a weapon in the armoury of romantics in an age where ‘any fool can reach several million people in a few clicks’. It is true that Hugh Grant’s name only, not his handwriting appears on his business card. However, together with the love, passion and dedication of Gianni, as my young, beautiful friend, paid for my 200 cards, their cumulative power is all too obvious. As for me, A Leo, born in the year of the dragon, with a romantic notion of having been a Venetian in a former life, I might still only sound like Hugh Grant, but at least now my business card is as good as his too, perhaps even a little nicer – my winged lion, the symbol of Venice is certainly bigger than his.

~ by 2ndcupoftea on June 10, 2012.

Posted in Heroes of History, Italy, Venice, Weird and Wonderful
Tags: Hugh Grant, Italy, North Italy, Printing, Venice, Writing