Living on the Edge: Letterpress printing and a turkey salad and wheat roll in Venice

Started the day with an interesting class with Louise Fili, and saw slides of her amazing collection of Italian signage, type, packaging and labels that inspire her great designs. Afterwards we took a walk through the streets of Venice to Gianni Basso’s letterpress print shop and saw his centuries-old printing machines, alphabets and the impressive stationery jobs he’s done with them. My biggest takeaway: printing by an affable, barely-English speaking Italian artisan in a charming shop in Venice using old world techniques, classic type and symbols is what the world needs to transcend ANY differences between people. As proof, he’s had both Joan Rivers AND Paul Rand as clients. We also started to choose the topics for our guidebooks and search for and photograph examples of them. While I’m proud of my guidebook idea and finds from several hours of walking around the city, my most triumphant accomplishment of the day was my resourceful and almost successful effort to briefly avoid cheese and carbs (truth be told I had a wheat roll with it), and creating a salad with turkey in Venice by going to three different shops. This has inspired me to go on a gin excursion in Russia.
Here’s a preview of images for my book “Red in Venice.”