Venice, La Serenissima
In this episode of the Culture Lounge podcast, we introduce Savoir Faire, a new series devoted to the rarest of arts: knowing exactly what to do, and doing it with intention.
To open the series, Alex Assouline sits down with founders Martine and Prosper Assouline around a title that is, in every sense, a masterwork: Venice: La Serenissima. A portrait of the world's most alluring city, and an object entirely worthy of it. The conversation moves through the details that define the book's singular character, a cover dressed in textile from the legendary Venetian house Fortuny, a hand-crafted metal crest of the Lion of Venice cast from an antique seal the founders had quietly held onto for years, and a binding realized by artisans they have trusted for three decades. "It's all a question of details," Prosper reflects, "and you can feel something."
But the episode is as much about philosophy as it is about craft. Martine and Prosper speak openly about their "no limits" approach to special editions, the belief that when creating the best of the best, creative boundaries simply do not apply. They trace the long, exacting process of image selection: hundreds of photographs reviewed and discarded in pursuit of something beyond the familiar, beyond the déjà vu, until only the most powerful remain. Prosper likens the final book to a recipe, a question of proportion and balance.
Venice: La Serenissima is, by their own account, the most complete expression of what Assouline's Ultimate Collection can be. Not merely a book, but an object. A gesture toward beauty made permanent.
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