World Standards Day poster 2000

About the artist : Portrait of Franco Maria Ricci

Scion of one of the oldest noble families of Parma, Franco Maria Ricci could have lived from private means. By the age of 12, it was already difficult to catch him out on the history of art. "My father sent me regularly to Pisa, Lucca, Sienna… by myself. On my return I had to give him a detailed report of all I had seen."

Before discovering his philosophy ("I publish books that people will be talking about in a hundred years' time"), the young geology student was recruited by Gulf Oil, the American petrol company. Destination: Upper Mesopotamia. A stay in Turkey with the same company, and back home he came. "I realized pretty quickly that petrol research interested me less than archaeology."

He returned to Parma where he met with his first success as a graphic artist. He drew theatre posters, and created logos for businesses in his city. And, when his mother offered him a Ferrari, he sold it, bought two printing presses and began work on a first passion that seized him: a faithful reprint of a Manual of Typography, impossible to lay hands on in any antique shop, by his compatriot Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813), the greatest graphic artist of his time. To his great surprise, the 400 copies of Bodoni's Manual of Typography were snapped up by the most prestigious libraries in the world, and are much valued by printers seeking high quality.

"I then realized that it was easy to be a publisher," he said. "One day I decided to reprint Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie, and to engage the help of a team of the best specialists. This huge job cost me four billion lire and six years of work. My three thousand copies in 18 volumes disappeared overnight." French President François Mitterrand made this one of his favourite gifts to hosts of distinction.

Learned bibliophile and friend of great writers, the Italian publisher is all of this. For 30 years now, Franco Maria Ricci has been publishing only rare books. "I only do books for discovery, not for the history of art. And out of a taste for hand-work. With the idea of working for eternity in the back of my mind. In a hundred years, anyone who wants to study serious books will have to consult mine, just as I consulted those of Bodoni. What I hope to become is a benchmark for book design. And that in two centuries' time, there will be collectors of my advertising leaflets, ready to pay, like I am, 2 000 dollars for a single galley proof printed by Bodoni."

Ricci Abroad

Franco Maria Ricci has his own bookstores in Italy (Bergamo, Bologna, Cremona, Ferrara, Florence, Milan, Naples, Parma, Rome, Turin and Vicenza), as well as in Mexico, New York City and Paris. In these are reading rooms decorated with refinement, that are like slipcases for his books, and in which FMR, his art review, published in four language editions, finds its rightful place.