Greeting card: Policeman

The Leopard Verified independent store

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In the drawers behind the counter at Fratelli Bonvini, there are printing plates - clichés - in lead, copper and wood, accumulated across more than a century of printing for Milane se businesses. The shop is going through them: cataloguing, restoring, and digitising what each one prints. This card is from cliche number 14 of the 1909 archive: a policeman springing out of a jack-in-the-box, arms thrown up at the surprise of his own arrival, drawn with the comic timing that mid-century Italian commercial artists brought to advertising posters and shopfront notices. The original plate would only wear further if it were used to print, so Bonvini has digitised the image, cut a new magnesium matrix from the file, and pressed the design back onto paper from there. Here in red. The cliché stays in the drawer, a silent witness. The design returns to use. Exclusive to Australia. Show more