freshly printed floral

Object: freshly printed floral

Location: Printfresh Studio, Paper Box Studios in Old Kensington

Background: Amy and Leo Voloshin  founded Printfresh Studio in 2006. Amy and her team of designers create about 80 textile designs per week to sell to clients ranging from mass-market (Kohl’s, Macy’s, Target) to higher-end apparel brands (Anthropologie, Polo, BCBG). They also maintain an enormous archive of vintage textiles that are sold mainly to the higher-end brands for inspiration.

digitally printed textile (paper-backed silk charmeuse) 

Context: It was tough deciding which object from their studio to feature — the digital printer generating a fabric sample on a paper-backed piece of silk charmeuse; the half-packed giant wheelie suitcase their salesperson hauls to NYC for go-sees; or some of the many many racks of vintage textiles, pictured below.

racks of vintage textiles, labeled “roses,” “ditsies,” “skins,” “paisleys”

The digital printer won out because I’m always charmed and amazed by any printer that emits a material other than paper. No doubt this’ll be an entry on a “You know you grew up in the early aughts if ….” making the rounds on 2032′s hot social media outlet: “You know you grew up in the aughts if you remember the first time you saw a digitally printed textile.”

Okay, that’s a little clunky for a zippy Facebook-of-the-future quiz but I’m sure the next generation will not be nearly as wowed as I am by digitally printed textiles or rapid prototyping machines. And they will certainly never have to bother with re-situating the holes in the sprocket tracks on a dot-matrix printer. Amy said the Printfresh printers are standard-issue Epsons, kitted out to print fabric.

a beautiful door from Printfresh’s new studio space

Printfresh is one of a very few studios that provide intellectual property in the form of freshly printed, original artwork/textile design to the apparel industry. Eighty percent of their clients are in New York.

And Amy and Leo have a bouncing baby building. They just moved their studio last weekend into their newest venture, which is actually a very old venture — Paper Box Studios is a 130 year old paper-box factory they rehabbed and carved into a few floors of beautiful, well-lit studio spaces. A 3,000 square foot co-working space opens on the 2nd floor in June. Many of the studios look out onto the horse-and-carriage ponies’ stalls across the street.

I was having a conversation with some people today about all the beautiful and unexpected ways that old and new come together in Philly. Hmm.