HOME AND HISTORY

The Piazzesi Bookbindery is the First " Paper Shop" in Europe.

 Piazzesi Bookbindery was born in Venice in 1851.

No other similar enterprise is known at the time or before Piazzesi’start in the Western World .

 Piazzesi is now renoveting itself, in order to keep up with the times, but it’s not changing, remaining in the same place where it was founded over 145 years ago..... , and keeping its unique atmosphere, full of history, culture, elegance, semplicity, refinement, genuinity. It’s inimitable and bound to last in time, because of the total superiority of the quality of its well known products and the matchless spirit that moves it and marks it. A spirit, Piazzesi’s, detached, inspired and superior to any vile imitation... Flattered of being the artistic enterprise most copied in the world,  PIAZZESI keeps up its flag whose belief is continuous innovation of the ideas and the fruits of its culture and experience in the field of paper, books and interior decoration,  with the trademark of a subtle but renewable and refined sophistication.
     
Beside the historical venetian premises in Campiello della Feltrina 2511/c, since 1998  the famous  Ditta  - Legatoria Piazzesi -  has opened to the public another artistic workshop in via Beato Pellegrino 25, ( only 30 Km from Venice )in the heart of  Padua:10 minutes’walk from the railway station and form the buses in  Piazzale Boschetti e Giardini Giotto degli Eremitani . This workshop is at the moment only open by appointment (telephone numbers at the bottom). Nevertheless, particular orders are accepted in both shops, by ordinary mail and by phone, fax, e-mail.  Orders will be dealt with according to the care necessary for the materials and the measures requested by the client, in a timespan going from 1 day to 7 months. The reason is that each of the 16 artisans cannot make more than 4 articles by hand, so complex orders request work and coordination of  several artisans at the same time.

Legatoria Piazzesi was the first " Bottega Artigiana d' Europa " to   invent  the new art of covering objects of everyday use with refined handprinted decors.

It was binder Carlo Piazzesi who, in this very workshop in Santa Maria del Giglio, spurred by publisher Giuseppe Rizzi, proposed, back in 1900, a lightening of books and volumes in general, renovating the very idea of binding, because he deemed the old one ‘monotonous’...

According to Rizzi the best art was the art coming from the past and born from silence ad sprituality of ancient cloisters...and it was actually in the wake of this ancestral teaching that publisher Giuseppe Rizzi’s grandchild, brilliant and visionary Ing.Valentino Rizzi, moved the family to live in the old convent of 1100 , now Villa Rizzi d' Albarea, behind the Brenta riviera, on the ancient  via Annia, the first road linking Venice and Padua....

.The sinergy of the happy collaboration between enlightened publisher Giuseppe Rizzi ( uncle of Valentino called uncle Beppino ), and the young apprentice of the old Master Ugo Bandini, young binder Carlo Piazzesi, at the beginning of 1900 was a great success, thus beginning a story of esthetic harmonies highly appreciated by millions of people all over the world ad still sought for  and up to date.

 The grandmother of all today’s  binderies in Europe, first and most famous bindery shop in the world, former intellectual drawing room and meeting place of famous writers, artists, aristocrats, clergymen, entrepreneurs, intellectuals, refined craftsmen, students and people with good taste, maintains today, after over 100 years, the absolute primate in the western world for quality and variety of its handprinted papers, and for the continuous innovation of the product and the amenability and kindness of personalized service for every single client.

Main Characters:

Master Ugo Teodoro Bandini, when he opened his first small shop for restoring and repairing books back in 1851, would not have thought his idea would be a winner in the long run.

He was a simple and good man, tall, humble and kind, and his peculiarity was to write small, intense poems to the one great love of his life, his buxom and resourseful wife from Cadore, Lavinia.  To prevent people from reading them, he reduced them in minuscule letters and he put them under the stamp, which he attached only by the four corners, in order not to ruin the text....Master Ugo didn’t know that in nearby Bassano the Remondini firm was already making decors, handmade by over 1000 Amanuensis printers....

 Around 1900  Ugo Bandini handed over his business to his young apprentice. Carlo Piazzesi was about 18. Tall himself, but stern and austere, ha was a stickler for precision, and intolerant of people’s shallowness and lazyness. He bought from the heirs of Remondini firm of Bassano, by then closed, a great amount of ancient types, and reproposed on a small scale in Venice the art of handprinting from Bassano. It was an immediate success!

After them: Unforgettable  tiny Mrs Romana Ivanissevich Scopini, a disarming smile and an iron character. Having replaced Carlo Piazzesi in the ‘50s, when she was already middle-aged, around 1967 she sold the business to  Mister  Robert   Frontier,  a learned and wise American tourist-entrepreneur in Venice, born in Chicago in 1943, who was replaced, in 1977, by Fabiola Colombin, then 45, born in in 1931, still rememberd by everybody for her extremely good manners and her refined good taste.

Since 1995 the bindery is managed by dr Lavinia Rizzi, a poet and writer from Padua, greatgrandaughter of publisher Giuseppe Rizzi from Varese ( unclr Beppino ) ,  who was the initiator of the famous decors today named "Decori Variesi”, that is, decors born in VArese by  RIzzi , and  divulged by PiazzESI...

Lavinia Rizzi  ( Prize for Culture of the Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri in 1982, and former first psychologist for the Sovereign Order of Malta in Rome since 1977,  as well as for the Ministry of Justice,  three books of poetry published. Lavinia after a youth spend with art, various prizes won in several personal and collective exhibitions,  with flattering letters signed by poets and critics such as Diego Valeri, Andrea Zanzotto, Ruggero Jacobbi, Giorgio Barberi Squarotti etc.) found herself celebrating the art of decor and binding, and showing, also in this field, great amenability and talent, both artistic and managerial, as well as an uncommon dedication in her determination to confront the challenges of globalization, even in an activity so sensitive and apparently ephemeral and in danger of extintion as can be today the amanuensis care of restoration of books and the manufacture of personalized objects.

The Marchio Legatoria Piazzesi  presently includes as many as 6 classes of products for a complessive over 700 objects of daily use, all producible and distinguishable for a name that more than any other, today like yesterday, is still trendy all over the world.

The goals for a complete and more functional renewal and refurbishing of the historic premises of the bindery ( 150 mq with garden) in Campiello della Feltrina 2511C a Venezia , and of the contemporary expansion of Marchio Piazzesi, offer today a magic and rare opportunity to link one’s name to Piazzesi’s to all those who, in the field of paper, books and  interior design,  want to have their personal elite window in Venice and in the whole world.