Venice / 17 September 2026

 

People We Meet

VENICE DIARIES

An afternoon with Gianni Basso, printer of Venice

September took us back to Venice.

For Homo Faber, for long walks through a city we never tire of, and for the kind of encounters that remind us why we are so drawn to people who still make things slowly, beautifully and by hand.

 

One of those encounters led us to Calle del Fumo, a narrow street in Cannaregio, and to the extraordinary world of Gianni Basso.

Gianni is one of Venice’s best-kept secrets. Although perhaps “secret” isn’t quite the right word. People travel from all over the world to find him.

There is no website to browse, no Instagram account to follow, no WhatsApp message to send. If you want to find Gianni, you go to Venice. You knock on his door. Or you write him a letter.

In a world in which almost everything can be found, ordered and delivered in an instant, there is something wonderfully radical about that.

Stepping into his tiny workshop feels like stepping into another time. Drawers of type, old printing plates, paper, ink and beautiful machines fill almost every corner. On the walls and shelves are traces of the people who have found their way here before you.

Gianni learned his craft as a young man at the monastery of San Lazzaro degli Armeni, where generations of Mekhitarist monks had developed an extraordinary tradition of printing and scholarship. He spent years learning the discipline of movable type and traditional printing before eventually opening his own workshop in Venice.

He has remained faithful to those methods ever since.

Today, surrounded by historic presses and typefaces accumulated over

a lifetime, Gianni still prints correspondence cards, invitations, bookplates and personal stationery much as they would have been made generations ago.

There is an intimacy to it that is increasingly rare.

The weight of the paper.

The impression left by the type.

The tiny variations that reveal the hand behind an object.

And perhaps most importantly, the time it takes.

We have always been fascinated by this idea at Morpho + Luna: that the things we keep are very often the things that carry the trace of someone who made them.

A fabric woven in a particular place. A print created by hand. A technique passed from one generation to another. An object that becomes more meaningful because we know something about the person behind it.

These are the people we love meeting.

The makers, craftsmen, artists and dreamers who continue to believe that how something is made matters.

Before leaving Gianni that afternoon, we asked him to make something for us.

A small collection of printed cards for Morpho + Luna.

This Christmas, you may find one tucked inside your Morpho + Luna parcel, a little piece of Venice, printed slowly in Calle del Fumo and sent out into the world.

A reminder that sometimes the most beautiful things still begin with paper, ink, a pair of hands and a conversation.

Sleep . Wonder . Dream

With love,

Cécile & Team Moprho + Luna