Category Archives: More Connections

The VIPS of RSVP

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In the picturesque mountain town of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, lies a gorgeous and amazing gem…Somersault, an independently-owned letterpress studio and card shop! From their vintage presses, to their gorgeous retail space, to their beautiful cards, Somersault is unique in every regard. I’ll pause here while you enjoy their amazing Instagram.

Owned and operated by Mitch Hanson and Amy Pienta (and adorably supervised by the Hammish, aka Hammie Noodle, seen below), what began as a side project in 2011 has bloomed into a multiple award-winning studio and retail venture.

How did this remarkable adventure start?

Believe it or not, our letterpress business began because we were planning on becoming farmers and cheese makers, LOL. We were spending our vacations on a friend’s farm learning about Icelandic sheep and how to make cheese, but everyone kept telling us we needed to do something else from the farm in the first few years of business to make money. In the meantime, we ran into an old acquaintance who was retiring their design + letterpress printing business. They did not want to sell to a commercial printer and hoped instead that someone would pick up where they were leaving off.

Naturally, we thought this would be a good fit for the farm venture. So we started learning about letterpress printing and running the business and instead ended up just finding our niche and falling in love.

What types of presses/equipment do you have?

10×15 Heidelberg Windmills from the 50s & 60’s, one with hot foil stamping & 1 Chandler & Price 12×18 handfed press from 1932. We also have a small 5×7 Kelsey Pilot press (used for fun), a 1970s Challenge cutter, a stitcher, drill press, and photo polymer plate maker.

black printer 2

 

Please tell us about your philosophy on paper, products, and process…

We are not a traditional letterpress printer in that we are using carved lino blocks or lead type. Before we started Somersault, we were already working in the commercial print and design world and very accustomed to working with all different types of papers and processes, so naturally that habit just stuck with us. We use our vintage presses in conjunction with modern day design programs.

When it comes to paper, we love to push the envelope and try new things. When it comes to our clients’ projects, we feel it’s important for them to have products that tell their story in their own way, so we constantly strive for uniqueness. Using unlimited colors and textures and options allows us the artistic freedom we look forward to, and allows our clients to stand out in a crowd.

Why did you decide to relocate from Las Vegas, NV to Jim Thorpe, PA?

A culmination of reasons, really – a little tired of the incessant heat, one of us wanting to be closer to family after being in the desert for 15 years, one of us wanting to explore the East Coast for the first time ever, and A LOT of needing to be around four seasons again. Traveling from Philly to Wilkes-Barre to see family, we always took a detour through Jim Thorpe and when thinking about places we’d like to live and have a retail space (we didn’t have retail in Las Vegas – just the studio), Jim Thorpe kept coming back to mind.

What’s one unexpected thing about working with vintage equipment?

Almost everyday we’re blown away by the engineering of these awesome presses and their versatility to print, foil, emboss, deboss and die cut on everything from super thin rice paper to triple thick cover stocks – even plexiglass and leather – over and over and over again. They are both heavy beasts with pressure and at the same time very delicate delivering precision with nothing but iron and steel… no circuit boards, or rebooting, or service calls needed… and if something isn’t printing correctly, it’s ALWAYS operator error.

You have an incredibly interesting and unique space. Please tell us about one of your favorite objects in your store or studio!

Our favorite object in our studio is our front counter – hand-built by the two of us – and seemingly the heart of the retail space. We wanted a unique way to highlight collected mementos and small pieces of our work in California type cases – yet never quite expected it to become such a communication tool. Friends and neighbors have brought items to be shared for the case, visitors have left foreign currency or little bits of their travels, and patrons are constantly fascinated by what they find there and feel compelled to share their own stories. Connecting with people across the counter in such a way has made the shop feel even more like home.

What’s one of the most challenging projects you’ve completed?

The most challenging in scope had to be the Bejeti Wallet media kit boxes. Working with an agency in Harrisburg, we developed and engineered a small multilayered box with a magnetic lid. The project involved producing die-cut insets and inserts that were hot stamped with holographic foil on a soft-touch black stock, embossing, hand assembly – all to showcase a piece of actual meteorite sitting prominently on a small magnetic stem. For our small studio, it was an intense amount of engineering and labor but it all paid off in the end – the project just won a national award for GDUSA’s Packaging Competition.

Please finish this sentence…if there’s one weird thing I’m obsessed with at work, it’s…

On a constant daily basis we are obsessed with the wonderfully weird phenomenon of watching an idea – literally conjured up out of nothing – transformed into this remarkable, tangible product. Watching this perfectly modern and beautiful piece come together on these old presses is like watching magic happen. We never get tired of it.

Many thanks to Mitch Hanson and Amy Pienta for allowing me to photograph their shop and studio!

Ode to the Toad

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Last week, we delved into the fascinating world of alchemy at the current , “Through the Glass Darkly: Alchemy and the Ripley Scrolls 1400-1700” exhibit. In our journeys, however, we did notice one thing. Both in history and alchemy, toads get no love.

In alchemy, the toad represents the “prime matter” an alchemist would use at the start of an experiment. Prime matter was the humble, plain, basic, ugly stuff that would eventually transform into greatness. Unfortunately, the toad was chosen to represent this undesirability. As expressed in this natural history book from 1809:

A Natural History of British Quadrupeds, Foreign Quadrupeds, British Birds, Water Birds, Foreign Birds, Fishes, Reptiles, Serpents, & Insects. Alnwick, England. W. Davison. 1809.

Well, this makes us sad. Toads are great! So the Cotsen team dug into the special collections vaults to find some awesome, jolly, and sweet historical representations of toads to share with you today…

Goldsmith’s History of Fishes, Reptiles and Insects & c. Thos. Tegg & Son. ; London. ; Smith, Elder, & Co. 1838.

Sad garden toad : and other stories / by Marion Bullard. New York : E. P. Dutton & Co., c1924.

Toad / by Carol Cunningham. [Mill Valley, Calif.] : Sunflower Press, 1983.

Die Honriche : ein Märchen / von Christian Bärmann. München : Hugo Schmidt, c1923.

Bronze toad coin. Place: Luceria, Apulia, Italy. Earliest date: -300. Latest date: -280

Special thanks to Cotsen intern, August Roberts, for researching this post :)

Scrolls, Secrets, and Symbols: Unlocking the Mysteries of Alchemy

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[Ripley alchemical scroll], 1624

When is a toad not a toad? To answer that question, we’ll need to delve into the fascinating history of alchemy!

Mysterious, fantastical, and shrouded in secrecy, alchemy in medieval Europe was the study of change and transformation. Practiced (both illegally and openly) from at least the first century until well into the eighteenth, alchemy’s obscure imagery of flasks, feathers, dragons, and lions disguised it’s more practical side: dissolving, distilling, and coagulating substances, either for riches, or for healing.

Girolamo Cardano (1501-76), De rervm varietate libri XVII , 1558 (Lyon: Stephanum Michaelem)

Recently, the Department of Special Collections at Princeton University Library hosted an amazing exhibit, “Through the Glass Darkly: Alchemy and the Ripley Scrolls 1400-1700.” Curated by Jennifer M. Rampling, Associate Professor of History at Princeton University, the exhibit is a fascinating exploration of the Ripley Scrolls.

With some scrolls clocking in at over 22 feet in length, the lavishly illustrated Ripley Scrolls are named after English alchemist George Ripley (d. Ca. 1490), although Ripley may not have invented them himself. Through the centuries, the Ripley Scrolls and their depictions of alchemical processes have been interpreted, copied, annotated, and studied by famous scientists including John Dee and Issac Newton.

[Ripley alchemical scroll], 1624

Interestingly, alchemists would sometimes use birds, animals, and unusual images to represent scientific processes. A toad, for example, represented “prime matter,” the substance the alchemist would start with at the very beginning of an experiment.

[Ripley alchemical scroll], 1624

In some works, a serpent and an eagle represent two salts (sal ammoniac and saltpeter). Ravens, peacocks, and eagles represented color changes. You can see some of those illustrated in the book below.

Basilius Valentinues, pseud. Letztes Testament (1667). Strasbourg, G.A. Dolhopff and J.E. Zetzner.

But probably the most exciting creatures gallivanting throughout the collections materials are …DRAGONS! The dragon pictured below very dramatically depicts the transformation of metallic substances into a life-giving elixir. Please note that the dragon is not, in fact, dying. It is happily giving forth healing.

[Ripley alchemical scroll], 1624

And now…how about an alchemy challenge of your very own?

We loved the concept of ingredients disguised as animals and secret recipes, so we put together a little alchemy experiment of our own. We’re calling it “Ye Olde Mysterious Rainbow Elixir of LYFE.”

Here’s the Ye Older Elixir of LYFE recipe (including a legend to held you decode it)! The original recipe can be found here, on Andrea Hawksley’s blog.

You can stop reading here, or continue to see how the experiment went for us. Spoiler alert: we had a MAJOR fail the first time. But honestly, that’s in keeping with the history of alchemy!

The Ye Olde Mysterious Rainbow Elixir of LYFE experiment was carried out by August Roberts, Princeton University freshman, budding alchemist, and intern extraordinaire. Take it away August!

Recently, I visited Princeton University’s exhibit on alchemy and learned all about how alchemists each had their own way of documenting and encoding their processes. Whenever I saw this challenging recipe for rainbow lemonade, I knew I just had to test my alchemical skills. We gathered the supplies, headed over to the staff kitchen, and set out to make our very own alchemical lemonade!

When we started, we knew we had to be careful because we only had two lemons and one cup of sugar. Just like the alchemists who were working with rare, expensive, precious metals, our supplies were limited and valuable.

Our first challenge was how to dye each of the five layers to get a rainbow. We had a box of food coloring, but there was only red, yellow, green, and blue – no orange! We experimented with different amounts of red and yellow food coloring until we found just the right amount: one drop of red per every three drops of yellow.

Our next step was getting the lemon juice. Before cutting and juicing the lemons, we applied gentle pressure to the fruit and rolled it back and forth on the counter. This allowed us to get the most juice possible out of our precious lemons.

Once we had all the parts ready, we began mixing each layer separately for assembly. We poured each colorful layer over the back of a spoon into a cup of ice, which was supposed to slow the flow and encourage the lemonade to settle into neat layers. However, we quickly realized something was wrong – our beautiful alchemical lemonade looked much more like a watered down coke.

Like a good alchemist, we persisted despite our first failure. After a bit of puzzling over our recipe, we realized that we had been pouring the more dense layers on top of the lighter layer, causing the colors to blend. With the limited amount of ingredients we had left, we decided to try again, this time pouring the most dense lawyer first and working our way to the lighter layer.

This time we had much more success! Although there was still a bit of blurring between the layers, our alchemical lemonade looked just as fantastic as we had hoped. When it came time to taste test, the flavor was admittedly pretty weak, but it was still a wonderful experience!