Two market boards facing each other across one card, painted by the same hand that painted the tiles — because you met in a ferry queue arguing about whether Palermo or Marseille has the better market, and never settled it.
Sixteen pieces. The argument runs through all of them.
They are laid out in the order a guest meets them. Each one is a translation of a single object — the bar menu — where a narrow cobalt panel says what the thing is and a wide white panel carries the information, ranked.
What arrives in the post. Five objects doing the work of one envelope — the loud one, the quiet one, and the three that answer a guest’s practical questions.
Decoration: high — cobalt owns the whole face. Keeps flood, mark, spelled-out date; drops split, painted foot.
Decoration: full — the master object. Keeps split, mark, painted foot, paired mark.
Decoration: low. Keeps split as the reply line, dot mark; drops flood, painted foot.
Decoration: low. Keeps split as column spine, dot mark, full dress-code sentence; drops flood, painted foot.
Decoration: low. Keeps timeline rule as the channel, dot mark at its head; drops flood, painted foot.
The first things a guest meets at Villa Tasca. This is where the split stops being a card and becomes architecture.
Decoration: high — the stripe at architectural scale. Keeps awning stripe, dot mark; drops split, painted foot.
Decoration: low. Keeps the header at equal size, mark below it; drops flood, split, painted foot.
Decoration: high. Keeps alternating rows, flooded header, dot mark; drops split, painted foot.
The longest stretch of the evening, and the only place the design is read at leisure rather than at a glance.
Decoration: low. Keeps split as the fold, name straddling it, mark; drops painted foot, date.
Decoration: medium. Keeps flooded header band, mark under the band; drops split, painted foot.
Decoration: medium. Keeps alternating flood, dot mark; drops split, painted foot.
Decoration: medium. Keeps split (38/62), vertical mark on the division; drops painted foot.
Decoration: medium. Keeps split, mark; drops painted foot.
What the guest takes home and what arrives later. The quietest two pieces in the suite, deliberately.
Decoration: medium. Keeps flood, mark, all three lines at equal size; drops split, painted foot.
Decoration: minimal — the quietest piece. Keeps short mark, colophon at hallmark scale; drops flood, split, painted foot.
Not a moment — the mark itself. B and Y as two separate letters sharing one baseline, never joined.
Decoration: minimal. Keeps two separate marks on one baseline, dot mark; drops flood, split, painted foot.
Your own words set the rule: “white is not a colour here, it is the grout.” So white does structural work on every piece — it separates, it is never the paper that happens to be left over.
| Pairing | Measured | Where it may be used |
|---|---|---|
| Mezzanotte on Grout | 11.97 : 1 | All body copy. Clears the 4.5 floor four times over. |
| Grout on Vucciria | 7.85 : 1 | All reversed type on a flooded panel. |
| Bougainvillea on Grout | 5.10 : 1 | Permitted for type, though it is spent on the mark instead. |
| Bougainvillea on Mezzanotte | 2.35 : 1 | Never carries information. Decorative only. |
| Vucciria on Mezzanotte | 1.53 : 1 | Never carries information. Decorative only. |
Display · the panel
A market board is lettered by hand, not set in a book. The sans takes a flooded cobalt ground at weight without turning the card into a document, and it holds a name at the size a name deserves.
Support · one lyrical line per piece
Each piece is allowed exactly one italic line — on platters, all night, still unsettled, and it does run late. It is the voice of the two of you, rationed the same way the pink is.
| Floor | House minimum | Delivered |
|---|---|---|
| Body type at trim | 8 pt | 8.06 pt — measured, not estimated |
| Guest name, place card | 14 pt | ≈14.3 pt |
| Largest : body ratio | ≈1.8 : 1 | 1.9 : 1 |
Every piece carries exactly one pink mark — a band, a rule or a dot. It is the only element allowed to cross a division, and it is the thing you two have in common, shown once rather than said.
It is also the suite's hardest rule: information is never placed under it. On the invitation the date sits below the band with its own clearance; on the itinerary the mark moved to the head of the timeline so it would stop landing on a row. Measured across the delivered suite, pink occupies 2.2% of the invitation's face.
| Field | Piece | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Guest name | Place Cards | Set whole and readable at ≥14pt — never split across the fold. |
| Table | Place Cards | The market name and its number, e.g. Vucciria · 1. |
| Seating | Seating Chart | All fourteen tables, alternating Palermo and Marseille down the terrace. |
| Dress code | Details Card | Your own sentence, verbatim, set last and small. |
| Reply | RSVP Card | The guest's own reply page. The code points at them, never at us. |
Cotton rag 600gsm, deckled on three edges, letterpress in two hits — the cobalt flood first, the midnight type second, so the type sits into the flood rather than on it. The flood stops dead at the panel edge, so the guillotined fourth edge is visible on the card and is meant to be.
Which of you leads on which language across the suite; whether the seating-chart joke should reach the table numbers or stay where it is; and a printed proof of the cobalt flood at save-the-date scale before we commit a run of 140.
The Kabyle fibula — the triangle with two points — appears exactly once in all sixteen pieces: blind-debossed on the reverse of the thank-you card, unlabelled. Nobody will find it but you.