THE MAKING OF

The Illustrated Historical Universal Ampelography is an editorial project at which the Artistica Editrice is working since 2008. All began in a library in Marseille: the admiration for the plates in the Traité général de viticulture, in a reprint of 1991, was the inspiration for the subsequent work.

The first important step was to make contact with the editors of this work, with whom there was an immediate synergy to carry out a project able to remain in time and to promote to the full the excellence of Italian productivity and not only.

Successively, the plates in these collections were photographed. The images were digitalised and retouched, with the help of the most modern and highly evolved technologies, with the aim to obtain a result that was identical to the original. This was not a simple objective: the original plates owe their extraordinary aesthetic quality to the technique with which they were produced, the chromolithograph.

Once the images were ready, the accompanying text was organised. This was a turning point in the project, which began to attract great interest, and not only in Italy. It was therefore essential to have a translation in English – beside the Italian text – in order to guarantee the most widespread distribution of this work possible. The three editors were supported by translators and experts, able to give the English text the same scientific value and the same quality of the Italian text.

Following the last accurate revisions of the draft and the finalisation of the editorial work, all was ready for printing, with particular attention paid to the choice of the best quality paper and to the binding, without forgetting the cover, which was chosen for great aesthetic impact.