Colophon

Two people,
one flat file,
a great deal of paper.

Thistlefield began in 2014 in the back half of a small storefront in West Hazleton, Pennsylvania — with a long worktable, a south-facing window, and more pressed plants than anyone has properly counted.

Marlowe Ash had been painting plants for other people’s books for eleven years and wanted to make something that would be handled rather than shelved. The first run was two hundred thank-you cards, printed on borrowed credit and sold to a single shop in Portland. They came back for more in a fortnight, which was as much of a business plan as we ever had.

Twelve years on there are two of us and a part-time hand in the autumn. We paint, we print, we pack, we answer the email. Nothing is drop-shipped and nothing is designed by committee. If a thing is in the book it is because one of us wanted it on their own desk first.

How we print

The painting

Every pattern starts as a physical painting — gouache and watercolour on hot-press paper, made at roughly the size it will be printed. Specimens come from a one-mile radius of the shop wherever possible; where they don’t, they come from pressed sheets in the university herbarium, with permission.

The press

Cards run offset on 118 lb uncoated cotton stock at a family press thirty-eight miles north. Foil is hand-fed, one sheet at a time, which is why foiled cards cost a dollar more and why the registration is very slightly different on every one. Wrapping sheets and tissue run flexo on lighter stock. Linens are screen-printed on washed 100% linen with non-toxic pigment.

The imperfections

Short runs move. A batch of two hundred and fifty sheets will drift a hair from the batch before it, and hand-fed foil does not land in precisely the same place twice. We consider that the point. Anything genuinely off — a crease, a lifted foil, a bad trim — goes in the seconds bin and never in the post.

Shipping & returns

Carriage. Flat $5.50 ground within the fifty states, free over $100. Priority Mail is $12 and takes two days. Orders placed before noon Pacific go out with the same afternoon’s mail; anything after that leaves the next business morning.

Packing. Cards travel flat in a rigid mailer, wrapped in tissue and tied with cotton twine. Prints go rolled in a tube with a stiffener. Linens are folded, not vacuum-packed. All of it is recyclable and none of it is plastic.

Returns. Thirty days on anything unopened, no explanation required — write to us and we’ll send a label. If something arrives damaged, tell us within a week and a replacement goes out immediately. Keep the original; posting it back costs more than the card.

Abroad. We post to Canada and the United Kingdom at cost. Duties are yours, unfortunately.

Wholesale

Around four hundred shops carry Thistlefield across the States, from single-till bookshops to museum stores. Opening order is $250, re-orders $150, standard terms are net 30 after the first order clears. Line sheets and a printed swatch book go out on request — write to info@thistlefieldpaper.lol with your shop name and city.

We hold back the first six weeks of any new pattern for our own shop and the Card Club, so trade release dates run a season behind the website.

Where to find us

This is a demonstration storefront built for a portfolio. The address, telephone and staff are invented; the goods and photographs are shown for illustration only and nothing here can actually be bought.