THOM 1 | Fall / Winter 2013

and she gave me the confidence to do it. You know,
on second thought, I said Katharine’s not artistic,
but what am I thinking? She’s very artistic, just in a
different way. She was in a hospital room giving birth
to her son and doing some of our beading from her
bed. That was crazy! I’m sure anyone who has their
own business knows you’ve got to be a little bit crazy
to do your own thing.
M: COMPLETELY. I have a few crazy stories myself!
S: (Laugh) It’s really not normal! There is this burn
in you and whatever it is just has to get done. Over
the years, whenever we would make a little money
we would upgrade a bit and move to a new space.
For the first two years we did all of the printing by
hand and made everything ourselves. Eventually,
we moved our business from Manhattan to Brooklyn
because I had a couple of dreams about screen
printing. In my dreams I’m hearing, “you know how
to paint, Susan. Why aren’t you screen printing,
Susan?”
M: In a dream?
S: Yes, in a dream! I told my sister, “Don’t think I’m
crazy. I had this dream and we’ve got to start screen
printing. My back hurts from ironing so we’ve got to
do something else.” So I went to visit this factory in
Redhook. There was this old curmudgeon of a guy -
short, big ears, cigarette hanging out of his mouth.
His name was Bob. The factory would remind you of
something from the Brothers Grimm. It was REALLY
dark. I walked to the back and there was an area full
of old mattresses and junk. It was beautiful to me.
M: Manhattan to Brooklyn. That was a leap!
S: It was, but, how else was I going to learn to screen
print? I didn’t know how to do that, so I thought
let’s go work in a factory. If I wanted to learn how to
make chocolate, I’d go work in a chocolate factory. Oh
my goodness, it was the craziest two years! No heat,
no air. Gunshot holes in the windows. Katharine
and I looked like old men in the winter wearing long
sleeves and baggy pants to work. It was great though.
We were LEARNING. Eventually, it got to be a bit
much. We were ready to learn the next steps for our
business, so we moved our printing to Rhode Island.
During that time we also had two retail stores. Our
company is 14 years old. I would say in the first ten
years, it was like going to school. We tried new things
and did everything we thought we should.
M: 10 years is a long time to be schooled. It’s also
rare for a new creative business to survive that long.
What do you think made the difference?
S: During that time, business was really good. It
wasn’t until the economy took a turn that we saw
how fortunate we were. We were in New York, we
had cash flow, we had retail stores, and the internet
hadn’t taken off yet. At that time, it really wasn’t a
business element for us. Five years ago we had a web
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