BOOK CHAIR

by LETIZIA MERATI

The writers (yes) tell

24 - 25 November 2012 - Milanese refrigerators

 

On the occasion of WRITERS – The writers (they) tell, the artist Letizia Merati exhibits SEDIA LIBRO, a bedside chair dressed with the pages of the novel Treasure Island by Robert L. Stevenson from the BUR Series (Rizzoli Universal Library), the container-backpack for books is an the box of a dictionary.

Until 1949 Rizzoli Editore had only published periodicals. It had established itself first with the leisure newspapers, then it had moved on to the news weeklies (Ombibus, Oggi and L'Europeo).

In 1949 Luigi Rusca, an expert in book publishing who had worked at Mondadori Editore, proposed to Rizzoli to publish books already known to the general public in paperback editions on the model of the German "Reclam". Rizzoli accepted and immediately set to work on its creation. The characteristics of the BUR volumes were: small format and non-rigid cover, grey-green in colour. The inconspicuous color contrasted with the elegant typeface of the cover, the Bodoni. The text instead was printed in the popular Times font.

BUR books came out every week. The price, this too was a novelty, was calculated according to a fixed proportion: 50 lire for every 100 pages, regardless of the notoriety of the work. The format was 10.2x15.6cm.

The first director of the series was Paolo Lecaldano, a Neapolitan intellectual; he was entrusted with the choice of works to be published. The first book in the Rizzoli Universal Library, released in January 1949, was the very famous I Promessi Sposi. The series was immediately a great success. In 1952, UNESCO declared the series "an initiative of global importance and interest".