Hello all:
I'm headed to Naples for a week in January... does anyone have any recommendations? Of course I'm going to Pompeii and Herculaneum, and Naples' exquisite ossuaries. If you have any suggestions of manuscript, typography, printing museums, and/or cemeteries and restaurants for this calligrapher/typophile/gourmet/Goth, they would be much appreciated!
Thank you so much,
Grendl.
Hi Grendl
It wasn't too long ago that I was in the Naples area. Pompeii has some lovely examples of ancient hand-tooled type.
Depending on where you're planning on going, it may be a little out of the way, but the paper museum in Amalfi is a real insight - they only stopped making paper in the sixties, and the Vatican still source their paper from them (now produced in an off-site fanctory), due to cotton's longevity as opposed to paper derived from wood. If there's a guide they're quite happy to show you the old factory with the old equipment, including how the cotton pulp is gathered and pressed. The tradition for local paper making is also being kept alive by a workshop just down the road. Will actually be writing a blog post about it shortly.
Enjoy your travels.
James
Captured from web.archive.org on 16 Jan 2012. view this capture