Stories on Paper

In which, paper is the support of Art, in any and all of its forms.

This will only take 6 minutes, we promise!

June is yet another month full of stories interwoven by and on paper, the medium to pass them down. In this letter we will taking a journey through time, travelling between stories jotted down by pen, double-spaced on a typewriter and those touch-typed on a computer keypad.

In the past, scholars believed that keeping within easy reach a notebook to set on paper quotes, ideas or musings by hand was the best way to learn, to copy and to organize a train on thought. Indeed, detailed manuals with rules and advice were abundant. Annotating has always been the caffeine of intellect: as the pen moves, the mind is alert and writing flows. Writing on paper makes us feel better and helps us flesh out our experience.

Probably, Anne had no inkling of any of this, but she started jotting down – mostly as a pastime - her thoughts in a red and white checkered notebook she had received for her thirteenth birthday. The date was 12 June 1942. Germans had occupied Holland and just a few months later she and her family would be forced to hiding in a 50 square-meter attic concealed by a revolving bookcase. They lived there for two years. Anne started keeping a diary in a letter-form, pages and pages full of hope for the future, in which she spoke about school, of her sisters and of the life she had been forced into. The blank sheet of paper she imagined as a dear friend. Anne Frank’s Diary was first published on 25 June 1947 by her father, the only Holocaust survivor of the family. Translated into 60 languages, The Diary of a Young Girl has been included in Unesco’s Memory of the World Register since 2009. The original notebooks are housed in the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation.

Diaries, stories, memoirs & letters: from personal and private musings they can become a collective tool for understanding society. The Piccolo Museo del Diario in Arezzo, Tuscany, has collected thousands of such writings over the years and created a journey made up of sounds, voices, lights and over 8,000 paper stories in multimedia form. A retracing and re-interpretation of the history of Italy from countless unique points of view. Writing on paper stimulates the brain, memory, and learning. Be it using a pen, with the elegance of handwriting and the scent of ink we still find in old letters and diaries, or using a machine, with all the sensations the good-old typewritten paper sheet offers.

Speaking of machines, in 1883, Mark Twain was the first ever to submit a novel to a publisher in a typewritten form. Twain wrote his first book on a Remington No.1. Patented by Sholes on 23 June 1868, the Remington No.1 was the first mass-produced typewriter and has its origins in a device used for numbering book pages. Fun fact - Because the machines were not fast enough to follow the speed of writing and given that the keys jammed continuously, Sholes came up with a new way of arranging the letters, separating the most frequently used pairs. Thus "Qwerty" was born, named after the sequence of the first six letters from the left. We still use it today! Typewriters have become increasingly light, beautiful and portable, so much so, that over the years they have become veritable objects of worship and many museums are devoted to preserving and exhibiting them. In Italy, Milan houses the Typewriter Museum, Trani boasts the Lodispoto Palace and Bolzano is home to the Peter Mitterhofer Museum. Our Beyond Paper&People blog will look in depth at the world of typewriters on 23 June, illustrating how they have been faithful companions to many of the most beloved authors of the 20th century.

Speaking of bestsellers, LubicaAdvice features the list of 10 Italian must-read books released in 2023 and some news on upcoming releases. Don’t forget, if you have any stories on paper hiding in your drawer, the time has come to dust them off and share them! (button: tell us a story)

Tell your story

As we were saying at the beginning, paper is the medium that links all these stories together and, although we have lost the physical sensations that a typewriter offers vis-à-vis a computer keyboard, great novels - luckily - continue to be written and published. In fact, there is another paper story we celebrate this month: on 30 June 1997, Harry Potter was first released. Undoubtedly, one of the greatest bestsellers of all time. Initially rejected by many, the book was first published in only 500 copies by a small publishing house. Harry Potter tells the story of an orphaned teenager who discovers he possesses magical powers and finds out that the world of wizards exists in parallel to that of “muggles”. 

Fun Fuct - The author has admitted that, although she loves it, she has never been able to “get” the Italian cover of the first book of the saga, which features Harry with a mouse-shaped hat while he plays a very weird chess game with a giant rat. None of this is in the plot and the illustrator herself shed some light: “I hadn't read the book. I only knew that Harry was a child who would have to face many trials in the school of magic and ultimately risk his life. I also knew that students could bring a mouse or an owl with them. Weird headdresses are the hallmark of my work, I love putting them on my characters’ heads.” What makes this edition even more rare – apparently £1.9 million is the highest auction price ever reached for an autographed copy - is a printing mistake on the removable dust jacket, which depicts Harry without his glasses. The author herself asked the cover be changed, but several copies had already been distributed to bookshops. The graphic style of the title and the author's name were also then modified by shortening it to J.K. Rowling, so the gender of the writer would not be obvious. The thinking was that a female author would sell less.

Just a few lines to remind you that the 12th edition of Lubica will take place from 28 July to 29 September 2024. Lubica24 “Here and now: tomorrow” calls for entries for the Artist Residence, Indoor Art and Video Art, Fashion and Performance sections are still open and close on 30 September 2023. Further information is available in January’s LubicaLetter.

Lubica 2024 theme

So many of you applied by May 31st! You will soon receive all the details for your article which will be published in Beyond Paper&People - the magazine, distributed for free during the Lubica24. If were late in signing up, no worries: we still have space available! As you know, Beyond Paper&People is also a blog and will have a new "meet the artist" section featuring an interview with those who apply by 31 July 2023. Our goal, as always, is to spread your art and your story. To inspire others and inspire ourselves as well.

For further info, contact us!

www.luccabiennalecartasia.com