A house that has profited from the printed page for two hundred and fifty years owes the page something in return.
Fondazione LIBRO.org is the non-commercial arm of the maison. It funds the conservation of endangered volumes, the founding of reading rooms, and the survival of the binding trades — entirely from patronage, never from the sale of books.
Where the
Fondazione Sits
The house speaks in four registers. Three of them you may buy into. The fourth you may only give to.
The name above the door. Two hundred and fifty years of taste, and the standing that comes with being seen to hold it.
Numbered, bound, finite. What cannot be reprinted is what makes a collection a collection.
The contents, not the object. The reason any of the rest of it was ever worth owning.
What the house gives back, and the only register in which nothing is for sale.
Three Programmes
Every grant is made for one year, renewable once, to institutions, ateliers and independent scholars in any country.
Conservation of Endangered Volumes
Grants to libraries, archives and monasteries to arrest the loss of manuscripts, first editions and photographic archives at material risk. Deacidification, rebinding, digitisation and climate-controlled housing.
Reading Rooms & Public Access
Founding and equipping reading rooms in places with none — schools, prisons, hospitals and rural communes across the three cities and beyond. Shelving, acquisition, and a librarian’s salary for two years.
Craft, Apprenticeship & the Trades
Stipends for apprentice binders, marblers, typefounders and gilders, and grants to the last ateliers still teaching them. A trade with no apprentice is a trade with one generation left.
The Fondazione LIBRO.org Research Grant
An annual open call awarding one-year grants to projects that recover, teach or extend the life of the printed page. Applications are reviewed by the Grant Council — five conservators, curators and scholars appointed for a three-year term — and awarded without regard to institutional standing.
The Fondazione takes no rights, no editions and no credit in the work it funds.
Three Ways to Give
Patronage is continuous, not occasional. Every patron is entered into the Annual Register — the Fondazione’s printed record of those who kept the page alive.
Patronage may be paused or withdrawn at any time. The Fondazione is a registered non-profit under Italian law; contributions are deductible where local statute allows.
One hundred per cent of patronage reaches the programmes. Operating costs are borne by the maison, not the Fondazione.
Anonymity is honoured absolutely. Patrons who prefer it are recorded as Un Amico in the Register.
The Grant Council
Five members — a paper conservator, an archivist, a master binder, a curator and a scholar of the book — serve three-year terms and review every application blind. No member of the maison sits on the Council.
A book outlives the person who paid for it. So does the gift.
Speak with the Fondazione about a named grant, a bequest, or the endowment of a reading room in your city.