Bound by Elegance

Bound By Elegance

The St. Regis New York partners with bespoke publisher, bookbinder and stationer Thornwillow Press to celebrate the culture of the past with a new timeless tradition.

TEXT: Lori Fredrickson  

According to Luke Ives Pontifell, owner and founder of Thornwillow Press, the age of internet has made book publishing anything but obsolete. “With every step forward in technology, the more the idea of a book as an object becomes more relevant and more purposeful, as a work of craftsmanship,” Pontifell explains. “Communication can grow through internet and internet technology, but it can make our communication seem intangible and disposable. The idea should be to preserve literary craftsmanship in the form of tangible objects, while allowing them to merge with the future.”

This is the concept behind Thornwillow Press’s new Libretti series, created in partnership with the St. Regis New York, where Thornwillow holds a bookstore and events center. A collection of craftwork publications, bound in leatherworks with original typography from craftsman bookmakers in upstate New York, the Libretti series is intended to be a “time capsule” of the best of our culture, comprised of both nonfiction essay collections of important topics in New York history as well as fiction and more art-based subjects that feature the best of meaningful works in our era. Objects to collect over the years and treasure, they each will also feature a direct link to internet archives hosted by Thornwood, with libraries of works by its featured Pulitzer and National Award-winning writers and other participating artists.

It’s also a concept that Luke Ives Pontifell has fostered over many years, since Thornwillow Press was founded in 1985. “We’ve worked over the years with craftwork bookbinders and typesetters in order to preserve the book as a work of art,” he says. “And we feature writers with that appreciation of cultural legacy.” 

A Natural Bind

This belief in literature as a constantly changing field grounded in history is also what drew the partnership between Thornwillow and the St. Regis, where Thornwillow, since opening up their interior bookstore, has also worked on restoring the books within founder John Jacob Astor IV’s personal library, which are displayed now in a library within the hotel.

“The St. Regis is what opened up this opportunity to us,” Pontifell explains, “but it’s evolved more quickly than we’ve expected, in part because of the enthusiasm of writers and artists we’ve asked to contribute.” These include both Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning fiction and nonfiction authors, and internationally known musicians. The first author in the series is Lesley M.M. Blume, writer of Let’s Bring It Back, a novel that celebrates forgotten pastimes, landmarks and personalities. For her first work in the Libretto series, she’s gathered together a series of essays that delve into the history of New York historical legends as they relate to New York landmarks such as the St. Regis.

“The overall essay has a ‘if these walls could talk’ feel to it,” explains Blume. “I did a great deal of reading and conducted interviews—including one with a 55-year-old employee of the St. Regis—to find tales that are off the cuff. Each essay is an exploration of an aspect of our cultural history, created by one celebrated contemporary writer or artist. The St. Regis is the main protagonist in the essay, but many iconic hotels are referenced.”

Scheduled for release in the summer of 2011, this first Libretto, like the ones to follow it, will be celebrated by a series of book talks at the Thornwillow boutique in the St. Regis, which has already held a series of performances and lectures by musicians and writers. Set in evening as cocktail-hour events that invite the writers to engage their audience via readings, along with following sessions where guests are invited to mingle and engage the lecturers, this provides a forum for writers of the Libretti to celebrate culture with a like-minded audience from both the St. Regis and its similar audience in New York.  

“I’m extremely grateful to be starting with Lesley, because her most recent book captured many of the aims of Libretti, which is keeping tradition alive within evolving culture,” Pontifell says. Let’s Bring It Back captured the “art of living” as evolving through culture through its own specific thread of customs, rather than something that is altered with the onset of new traditions. “She’s pulled together a wonderful collection of old New York stories that have been forgotten and are worthy things to be reviewed.” Though they don’t want to give away too much about the series before its official release, the topics, as Blume has noted, are buried stories, under-the-scenes moments at historic hotels like the St. Regis.

Blume adds, “I’ve said that ‘even the most astounding legacies can get lost in the dust kicked up by progress if they are not documented and discussed in retrospect.” This is the central theme of my Libretto as well. Many of the most illustrious Astor hotels have been knocked down, and we have only words on paper to keep their memory alive. The St. Regis survives, and thrives, so it’s splendid to incorporate this within a physical space where so much artful living has taken place over the decades.”

Worthy Subjects

“We’re excited for what will come next,” Pontifell says, adding that the growth of the project as they’ve reached out to writers has made it expand to an unexpected level. “The Libretto series now includes more names than we’d previously expected; the writers we’ve reached out to have been incredibly excited about it.”

The reason for this, he adds, has partly to do with the goal of the project. “Artists have evolved like viewers and readers in adjusting to the technological age,” he says. “The last ten years have been groundbreaking in the way things have changed. It’s inspiring in the way that we’re always compelled to move forward, but also reminds us to think of preservation. Having the worthy objects as part of a keepsake, as a collection, is something that writers are inherently drawn to, because their work relies all on moments of personal inspiration. And the series is a collection of those important moments.”

Upcoming subjects include Maxfield Parrish, the legendary mural artist who created the mural in the Old King Cole Bar at the St. Regis; and a series of music “best of the best” by a well-known New York jazz legend. The Libretto series will be released in elegant volumes handcrafted by artisan typesetters in upstate New York, available to guests of the hotel and for purchase by the general public both at the St. Regis boutique and through Thornwillow (www..thornwillow.com). Each will include a code or a “portal” that allows them access to a virtual library of additional work by the writer, musician, or writer of the specific work. 

A Little Yesterday for Today

 Ideally, Pontifell says, the creation of this type of series will fit its contemporary audience, by allowing them to embrace the potential of the internet while being reminded of the necessity of its tangible correlating object: a handsome, well-crafted object that allows the reader to connect with its text through personal experience. “Back in the day, writers used to keep books also as journals; it was an idea of filling a volume with their notes so that the volume itself would become an eternal text,” he explains. “Thomas Jefferson had volumes like these that he kept his own notes in. The tangible object was part of the reading experience, and the Libretti series is meant to capture that experience and surpassing it, by incorporating literature meant to be remembered while incorporating a craftsmanship level of binding and design that makes it a collector’s item. These aren’t works just to be read and forgotten; they’re works that either have been remembered because they’ve been important parts of history, or because they’re part of our culture now and should be remembered for that reason.” 

 Pontiff is happy to be partnered with the St. Regis, he adds, because the history of the St. Regis matches the importance of linking tradition with the future. The St. Regis has insisted on preserving tradition as it adapts to the modern age; John Jacob Astor’s library remains part of its heritage as a time capsule of New York and the world within the time-frame it was collected in, just as Thornwillow now creates a new library of culturally relevant works. 

 “By making a handcrafted volume with a portal to the infinite storage space of the internet, we’re allowing the readers to keep a treasured object as part of their collection while giving them a link to what may be out there,” Pontifell says. “That, to me, is the best part of keeping culture alive without sacrifice; keeping the structure of its legacy as an object important and maintained, while allowing it access to the stream of the future.”