Featured Artist : Vanessa and PietroAccardi Book Arts

Pietro is native to the northwestern Italian city of Turin where his father Gaetano founded and operated "Tipografia Accardi." In 1950s Italy, it was a state of the art printing press. His youth spent in the press led him to restoration, bookbinding, and paper marbling. His education at the Turin Polytechnic School of Arts and Graphics provided discipline in the artistic element of bookbinding. Under the tutelage of Dr. Bruno Fabbiani, his thesis is an in-depth account of color science and psychology in the tradition of Goethe and Chevreul, using the techniques of Marbling to explore and illustrate their theories.

After 6 years of self-directed training in marbling, binding and restoration and he founded "La Legatoria del Sole", It served Turin's Bindery for Municipal Archives, public, university, and musical libraries. The combination of disciplines was his livelihood and his artistic expression. The events of the 2008 financial crisis had a devastating effect on culture and the arts in Italy. Libraries would no longer restore books, they were then shrinkwrapped to await either more prosperous times, or digitalization.

In 2007 he met Vanessa, an American exchange student. Due to the crisis and imminent closure of the Bindery, she encouraged his relocation to her country. With his lifetime experience and mastery of the craft, in the USA he found a very receptive and appreciative audience with which to share his knowledge. Without the pressures of a professional bindery, Pietro and Vanessa have ventured together into more creative projects with marbling, experimenting with marbling on all kinds of textiles
and materials. They now teach regularly at the San Francisco Center for the Book, Nevada Museum of Art, at his home studio near Lake Tahoe, and workshops nationally.