All over Italy, there are signs of the Roman Empire. The first street nameplates in Rome were hand-carved in marble. Latin letters set in stone. That practice has continued, with many of the same tools, ever since. Exemplar owes nothing to the look of these letters — only to the tradition they represent: making something that lasts.
Stone does not forgive mistakes. Every cut is final, which demands a rare kind of patience. Digital design offers the opposite problem. Undo is infinite, nothing is final until you decide it is. This endlessness demands its own discipline: not to stop your hand, but to know when to lower it.
Exemplar had already been through decades of revision by the time it reached Pietrasanta. Thirty years of drawing and redrawing had made the decisions. The stone only made them permanent.
“Littera scripta manet,” as the Romans said.
