Accardi Book Arts

On the second weekend of October 2026, Accardi Book Arts, at 1446 Douglas Avenue in Gardnerville, opens as Studio 7 of the sixth annual Carson Valley Art Studio Tour. The tour lists Pietro Accardi under a single heading, “Paper & Fabric Marbling.” The studio’s website opens on one item, a marbling bath for silk scarves. Its textile pages divide the work three ways: overmarbled silk scarves, single marbled silk scarves, and marbling on Pimatex cotton. Pietro and his wife, Vanessa, founded the place as a book arts studio and bindery. In the words of the tour’s biography, they did it “to follow his passion of marbling fabric/paper and to preserve the tradition of handmade books and boxes.” The same site lists studio classes, online class videos, book restoration and a shop.

Studio 7 and the drive between

The tour is drive-yourself, sponsored by the Carson Valley Arts Council. The Record-Courier counts 15 studios and 24 artists in 2026, spread through Genoa, Minden and Gardnerville. All of them have work for sale, and the program includes open studios, live demonstrations and a schedule of music features. Studio 7’s neighbors on the list include painted gourds at Studio 10, bead-embroidered jewelry at Studio 13, and pastels on black paper at Studio 14. The organizer gives hours of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, October 10, and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday, October 11; the studio’s own calendar runs Sunday to 4 p.m. Printed maps are at the Arts Council office on Highway 395 in Minden and at local galleries. The more studios a visitor reaches, the more chances to win free art. The studio also opened its doors on the tours of 2023 and 2025.

Trays, carrageenan and fifteen sheets

The workshop lists show what happens around the bath. On June 27, 2026, Accardi taught a one-day introductory class at Focus on Book Arts in Forest Grove, Oregon. He supplied primed paper, primed fabric, carrageenan, drying racks and trays for marbling, and students brought an apron and comfortable shoes. He talked through the color wheel and demonstrated the classic patterns and simple harmonic color combinations. Each student made at least 15 marbled papers. The class description gives the craft’s arrival in the West: “Marbled paper came to Europe from the East around 1600 and embellished the fine work of hand bookbinders. The edges of precious books were decorated with this technique.”

In May 2026 he taught five workshops in Fairbanks, Alaska, for the Northwoods Book Arts Guild, in the Lions Building at the Tanana Valley Fairgrounds. Two used his marbled fabric as a covering: a journal in an articulated binding on precut boards, and a clamshell box with several compartments. Others moved from paper to cotton that had been cut, washed and primed, and on to patterns, metallics and over-marbling. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner introduced him as a “world renowned marbling artist, book binder, and handmade box designer.” Two years earlier, on August 31, 2024, he gave a webinar for the American Bookbinders Museum in San Francisco. He spoke on the legendary origins of marbling, on historical and modern patterns, and on his marbling of materials other than paper, and he gave a live demonstration.

A press in Turin

The bindery in Gardnerville descends from a print shop in Turin, in northwestern Italy. There Pietro’s father, Gaetano Accardi, operated Tipografia Accardi. The studio describes it as a state-of-the-art printing press in 1950s Italy, and the tour biography calls it a commercial press that Gaetano founded. From a young age Pietro assisted his father in the bustling press. He then took up the older crafts of paper marbling, restoration and bookbinding.

In 1997, by the account of the tour and the bookbinders museum, he established La Legatoria del Sole, an artisanal and production-oriented bindery in Turin. The studio’s own page says he ran it for 12 years. He restored and bound books for Turin’s Municipal Archives, its main public library and its university libraries. Within the bindery he also kept a business of his own in paper marbling and decorative boxes.

An exchange student and the Eastern Sierra

In 2006 he met Vanessa, then a university exchange student. They soon married, and as the studio’s page puts it, she later “imported” him to America. He taught paper and fabric marbling at the San Francisco Center for the Book, at the Nevada Museum of Art in Reno, and at other venues along the West Coast. The News-Miner adds Focus on Book Arts and the Newport Paper Book Arts Festival. The couple live in the Eastern Sierra Nevada with their cats.

The studio’s calendar traces the circuit since then. It lists holiday fairs at the San Francisco Center for the Book, the Nevada Museum of Art’s Arts and Flowers luncheon fair at the Atlantis Casino, the artists’ fair at Focus on Book Arts, the Carson Valley Museum & Cultural Center fair in May 2022, and CODEX in Oakland in February 2026. In May 2023 a Carson Valley Arts Council reception opened Pietro’s month as featured artist at the Copeland Gallery in Gardnerville. That September the couple gave live marbling demonstrations at the Silver State Arts Festival at Fuji Park, pledging part of all profits to the Humane Society for the welfare of cats and dogs. Later that month they demonstrated again at the 20th Roadworks Steamroller Printing Festival. One of the earliest entries is December 9, 2017, the Nevada Museum of Art’s open house. Pietro and Vanessa led 45-minute marbling adventures through the day, and each registrant left with a hand-marbled Christmas card.