A name with lineage
We carry the name of one of the great printing families of the Renaissance — and try, every day, to deserve it.
Printing done properly, and beautiful type — five centuries before it was fashionable.
Robert Estienne (Robertus Stephanus, c. 1503–1559) was royal printer to King François I of France, famous for precision, scholarship and pages as beautiful as they were exact.
The press worked with the punchcutter Claude Garamond, whose typefaces still shape how the printed word looks today. That is the lineage we carry — and below is how the story runs, from the royal press to the house today.
Five centuries, one standard
The royal press
Robert Estienne — Robertus Stephanus — is royal printer to King François I of France, celebrated for his scholarship and for pages as beautiful as they are exact.
Garamond cuts the type
The house works with the punchcutter Claude Garamond, whose roman letterforms are so right that they still shape how the printed word looks five centuries on.
Ink, pressure, paper
Letterpress, foil and engraving are all but lost to mass printing — yet a few hands keep the craft, pressing type into fine stock the slow, old way.
The house, today
Estienne carries that name into now — a Paris printing house making cards of every kind to order, on a variety of fine papers, and pairing a Renaissance standard of craft with modern proofing and delivery. The belief underneath it all: luxury, made available to everyone.
The mark
An olive tree, and a promise to do things properly.
The family's printer's mark was an olive tree — patience, cultivation and craft. We keep the olive as our own quiet motif.