“Addicted to printing.”
Foto: Giovanni Altana
Lucio Passerini —
Il Buon Tempo
Lucio Passerini is a printmaker, typographer, printer and publisher of artists books.
His imprint is il Buon Tempo, based in Milan. He also curated the italian edition of some classic texts by masters of modern typography.
Foto: Giovanni Altana
Define yourself in 3 words.
Addicted to printing.
Define what you do in 5 words.
Prints that money can buy.
What’s your inspiration?
My imprint, il Buon Tempo, is explicit
Time is the precious treasure that we all have the opportunity to manage.
Spending time on books – imagining, designing, printing – is to me the best way to spend time
Il Buon Tempo is a game, serious and light, I use to say.
game is the activity that man considers most seriously, eventually.
Foto: Giovanni Altana
What is your relationship with the past and with the future?
I always happen to find myself in between the one and the other, like everyone else.
I like to study the traces of the past, it’s both necessary and fascinating.
Knowing these traces serves to leave one’s own.
The three most important things you learned?
“The artist is always beginning” scriveva Ezra Pound nel 1913.
We learn that there is always something else to learn.
Printing types and the hand press involve a mix of intellectual and manual work. This combination is essential.
Composition and printing techniques are simple, so are the tools and machines used, all inherited from previous generations.
However, keeping under control the subtle phisical variables that influence the result, papers, inks, printing pressure, humidity, etc., involves great attention and constant commitment, things that are aquired slowly.
What’s your opinion regarding today’s public?
This could be a theme to be developed in a long essay.
In general it is upsetting to see how the possibility of choosing among pre-packaged menu items is mistaken for the exercise of individual freedom.
in the small field of my experience I see that the fracture between generations caused by rapid changes in technology has triggered a new interest in artisanal processes in the most attentive part of today’s youth. It remains to be seen whether the phenomenon will take root or soon will pass.
I see that the fracture between generations caused by rapid changes in technology has triggered a new interest in artisanal processes in the most attentive part of today’s youth. It remains to be seen whether the phenomenon will take root or soon will pass
What is creativity?
The journalistic expression “creative work” cracks me up.
Perhaps creativity is simply the inclination to solve problems by experimenting with new solutions.
I certainly know that it is directly proportional to knowledge, which in turn is directly proportional to curiosity.
If - today it often happens - the word is intended as a vague celestial gift, an elusive privilege, then it becomes an alibi for amateurism and generates only crap, as Enzo Mari says, a commercial label applied to selected products.
I would say that creativity is the fruit of good digestion of knowledge.
So it’s better to eat well.
The creativity is the fruit of good digestion of knowledge
Tell us about your personal creative process.
The starting point is often a text, a key image. a cue from the previous project.
From this basic material the process begins, the doing and undoing that eventually leads to making an object made of printed paper.
Your next project?
A funny collection of tautograms related to italian opera.
What did you want to be when you were a child?
As a child I would have answered this question “I’ll do what I can.”
What idea would you like to have had?
Ah! if I had invented the bicycle ...
The third great invention of humanity after the wheel and the printing press.
Foto: Giovanni Altana
Foto: Giovanni Altana
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