In Rochefort, a soon-to-be bicentenary printing house is looking for buyers: “Our idea is that everything stays here”

Nathalie Rodriguez and Michel Bon asserted their retirement rights more than 4 years ago. They are now looking for buyers to pass on this extraordinary business associated with an ancestral profession, that of typographic printer. “Our idea is that everything stays here. This tool is perfect. Otherwise, everything will be scrapped,” says Nathalie Rodriguez. This eventuality would cause Rochefort to lose an almost two-hundred-year-old heritage business. “We know that a work was carried out here in 1835,” explains Nathalie Rodriguez. Since then, this business has printed many books, invoices, order slips and other business cards.

“e”, “s” and zeros

A few weeks are enough to learn this ancestral know-how inherited from Gutenberg, says Michel Bon. “I compose line by line starting from the right, because the letters, once printed, end up in the right direction on the paper. Everything is measured in thirds of a millimeter,” he explains, using tiny lead characters. Its drawers are overflowing with different fonts, available in several sizes. The letter “e” is the most used, followed by “s”, plurals required. “For numbers, it’s zero. With telephone numbers, they are everywhere now. That was not planned at the time,” smiles the printer, who sometimes finds himself short of characters.

The most difficult part, however, remains putting everything in the right place once the printing is done: “Redistribution is much more tedious,” he euphemizes. Nathalie Rodriguez and Michel Bon hope to pass on this heritage in 2025: “It would be heartbreaking to see all these tools leave these places…”