Celebrating Pregliasco

Editor’s note: Today we take a break from our series celebrating the 1600th anniversary of Venice to honour another pair of anniversaries close to the heart of PrPh. The text below, written by PrPh co-founder Umberto Pregliasco, commemorates the first ever catalogue issued by Libreria Antiquaria Pregliasco in Turin and offers a tribute to Umberto’s father, Arturo, whose influence continues to be felt even here in New York. As a forbear of PrPh, we are so happy to celebrate these anniversaries with the Pregliasco family.

June 2021 marks two important anniversaries for Libreria Pregliasco, nine years after the centenary of its establishment was celebrated at Columbia University: the 100th anniversary of our very first catalogue and the 90th birthday of one of its major protagonists, my father, Arturo Pregliasco.

Arturo’s own father, Lorenzo Pregliasco founded the namesake bookshop at Via Principe Amedeo in 1911, but it would not be until June of 1921, after Lorenzo had returned and regrouped after serving in World War I (the postcard at right was sent to the front on 19 June 1916), that the first catalogue would be published and sent out to such notable figures as Benedetto Croce, Piero Gobetti and Luigi Einaudi.

Printed on plain paper, Catalogue no. 1 continues to hold deep meaning for us, standing as it does at the origin of the long series that followed. Going through the pages of this historical and familial treasure, 100 years after its publication, is quite moving, with its delicate pages, yellowed with dignity, and simple wrappers. The reputation and legacy of an antiquarian bookshop is largely established through its catalogues, which offer a sort of spiritual testimony of the bookseller, a reflection of his personal history and intellectual passions.

The catalogue included a total of 635 entries, mostly from the 18th and 19th centuries, with a few from the 15th and 16th as well. Alongside more “serious” sections devoted to art, literature, and religion were likewise substantial but less traditional ones dedicated to anecdotes, “curiosities”, erotica, and freemasonry. Among them one finds daring titles, even for the time, including A Démonomanie des sorcieres, a 1581 classic about witches, listed for 15 lire; L'éloge à l'yvresse which, published in 1715, exalts drunkenness at the age of 14; and La Ficheide of 1791, offered for only 6 lire. The canonical classics, however, already had high price tags: a copy of Tasso’s Gerusalemme, illustrated by B. Castello (1617) is listed at 180 lire and an incunabulum of the 1498 Bible at 650! A curious note added to the conditions of sale announces that prices are to be increased by 50% for all foreign sales.

Ten years after the publication of that first catalogue, Lorenzo's first son, Arturo, was born, and tomorrow, 17 June, marks his 90th birthday. For decades Arturo continued the family tradition: despite degenerating vision caused by maculopathy, up until five years ago he went to the bookshop every day to take care of his books – to “breathe in and listen to” their pages. Of course, the bookseller does not stop being a bookseller when he closes his store in the evening: moved by a passion well beyond financial regard, his activity extends to all corners of his life through the habit of bibliographical research, the conservation of books, and the re-evaluation of what is little known or forgotten. For those who really live among books, they become part of one’s identity and way of life. Those who really live among books never fully retire.

Arturo started working at his father’s side in the early 1950s, first in the bookshop and then around the world. He loved to recall how he used to “travel in the smoking section of the third class”, searching for libraries, but soon enough he was flying to Paris and London for the first auctions and fairs held at the Europa Hotel, then embarking on lengthy trips to the United States, for example, for an exhibition in Los Angeles in 1967 along with others at the Plaza in New York, with lists written up in English.

He made use of his familiarity with French and devoted evenings to studying English, and hence was gradually able to expand the international scope of the bookshop’s activity. His prominence in this expanded field is further attested by his presidency of the ALAI (Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of Italy) from 1970 to 1976.

Travelling regularly, Arturo began exchanging books, and sharing experiences, with all the greatest booksellers of the post-war period: Menno Hertzberger, Bill Fletcher, Martin Breslauer, Arthur Lauria, Fernand De Nobèle, François Chamonal, Gabriel Rossignol, Charles Traylen, Hans Peter Kraus, Barney Rosenthal, Lathrop Harper, John Fleming, Bernard Clavreuil... As a boy, I would accompany him to foreign fairs and was thus granted the absolutely unique opportunity to meet all these “Great Old Men” of the book world while standing by his side.

In 1961, Arturo enlarged the bookshop by moving it from its original location to its current premises in front of the Academy of Fine Arts: 2021 therefore also marks Libreria Pregliasco’s 60th year at this location. Since that first catalogue, the shop has issued around 300 short-title lists, exhibition booklets, and more deluxe monographic catalogues exploring a similarly well-rounded set of topics as that announced by Catalogue no. 1. Indeed, Arturo ensured as much, especially with his Convivio series, first published in 1967. Inspired by Dante's eponymous treatise which defended the use of the vernacular while providing a sort of encyclopaedia of medieval knowledge, the purpose of Arturo’s “Convivii” was precisely to offer books that were both varied in subject matter and affordable. Issued until 1990, the series thus offered a “banquet” of knowledge, the courses of which were diverse and particular and included aeronautics, gastronomy, religious asceticism, regional costume, local history, hagiography, calligraphy, and the 1821 uprisings. The graphic design of the catalogue was simple and elegant, with the title framed by Simon de Colines's ornamental quadrivium border to recall the four Liberal Arts of astronomy, music, geometry and arithmetic, the study of which, by tradition, followed the trivium of theology, medicine, and law. As with Dante’s use of the vernacular, the series offered an introduction and invitation to any and all who simply wanted to learn more about a wide range of topics.

In 1960, with Catalogue no. 16, Arturo also became among the first booksellers in Italy to promote twentieth-century literature on the international stage: for the first time, contemporary Italian writers and Futurists gained bibliographic recognition abroad, even approaching the same level of value long reserved for original editions in French and English.

Many other monographic catalogues were added to the dozens of lists of books, prints, and ephemera issued by the bookshop, including Dante e il suo tempo, produced in 1965 for the seventh centenary of the poet’s birth, Alessandro Manzoni (1973), Gabriele D'Annunzio (1972 and 1996), Risorgimento Italiano (1978), L'idea del teatro (2005), and Le Alpi nei secoli, issued for the 2006 Turin Olympics. Meanwhile, Catalogue no. 86, dedicated to art history, provided the basis for an extensive article in the Giornale dell'Arte which celebrated the anniversary of the bookshop under the playful title “Novant'anni, sulla carta” (“Ninety years, on paper”). Today, after many years, this can be read as an affectionate and premonitory dedication to the bookseller who left that catalogue and many others to younger generations of collectors and enthusiasts.

 We are therefore delighted to be celebrating, a century after the first Pregliasco catalogue, the 90th birthday of a great bookseller who, through his catalogues and activity, has done so much to shape the book world for multiple generations while keeping Turin’s name held high.

A few years ago, Arturo himself wrote a sort of living epitaph of his own, which concluded as follows: “I hope that a trace of my life as a bookseller will continue through the more than two hundred catalogues compiled in over sixty years of activity, and in the approximately ten thousand antique books described with care, some of which can be found in private and public libraries all over the world. Living with – and thanks to – books has been a great privilege.”