The Stampographer

The first English-language introduction to Vincent Sardon (b. 1970), the Paris artist who designs, casts and sells rubber stamps under the name le Tampographe, and uses a bureaucratic tool to refuse authority rather than assert it.

Edited by Lisa Pearson and Richard Kraft for Siglio, the book gathers around 200 impressions from Sardon's output: insult sets in a dozen languages, skeletons and organs, obscene hands, sport and pornography, and the defacement of art-historical monuments, printed in the colours of the stamp pad. An interview with the artist by the editors, translated by Philippe Aronson, sets out the workshop economy behind the work; Sardon makes everything himself and sells it directly from his shop at 4 rue du Repos beside Père Lachaise, outside galleries and the art market. 100 pages, hardcover, published in 2017.

Sardon drew for Libération for a decade before turning to stamps full time. His blog chronicles were collected as Le Tampographe Sardon (L'Association, 2012), and a further volume, Le Tampographe, followed from Flammarion. Dada and pataphysics are the nearest reference points; the library's holdings on rubber stamps, mail art and artists' multiples are the nearest shelves.