Rare & Beautiful

Discover The Bolted Book, A Masterpiece of Avant-Garde Book-Making

Our new dedicated website lets you explore this 1927 gem page by page.

By Steve Kroeter September 22, 2016

The Italian Futurist Fortunato Depero’s 1927 monograph Depero Futurista, also known as The Bolted Book, because it is famously bound by two industrial aluminum bolts, is acknowledged as the first modern-day artist’s book. Filled with typographic experimentation and serving as a showcase for Depero’s art in a variety of media, it is universally recognized as a tour de force of avant-garde book-making.

Designers & Books, in collaboration with the Center for Italian Modern Art in New York, and the Mart, Museum of modern and contemporary art of Trento and Rovereto, Italy (which houses Depero’s archives), will launch a Kickstarter on October 18 to publish a new facsimile edition of this rare and groundbreaking book.

The Book

Depero Futurista Fortunato Depero

Before we launch our campaign, we invite you to explore The Bolted Book at a new dedicated website, www.boltedbook.com, where you can see each of the book’s 240 pages in detail, read translations from the original Italian and annotations of selected texts, and learn more about Depero’s life and work.

As a special pre-Kickstarter offer, if you sign up on www.boltedbook.com, you’ll be the first to be notified about our best early backer discount for the facsimile and you’ll also receive a free print of one of the pages from the book.

Description of “typographical architeccture,” page from Depero Futurista (“The Bolted Book”), published by Dinamo-Azari, Milan, 1927. Artist’s book bound with bolts, 9.5 (h.) x 12.5 (l.) in. (24.2 x 32 cm). © 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE Rome

Please visit www.boltedbook.com and discover The Bolted Book!

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