A thousand stories in a single wooden typeface
IT’S CALLED SUPER SMOKE. At first glance, it looks like something off a Haight-Ashbury concert handbill. “The psychedelic movement adopted this font,” says Marie Oberkirsch, director of Central Print, a print studio in Old North St. Louis, “so it does look very ’60s and ’70s.” But Super Smoke dates to the 19th century, and that’s where this story starts.
Around 1889, a “Mr. Lelli” founded Przewodnik Polski, or Polish Guide, on St. Louis’ Near North Side. In 1905, it was handed off to a parish priest, who didn’t know what to do with it. He begged his sister, Helen Moczydlowski, to move from Wisconsin to help. She and her husband, Boleslaus, bought a building at 1308 Cass, set up house, and put presses in the basement. The Moczydlowskis odd-jobbed posters, wedding announcements, and handbills, but their main task was publishing a paper every Thursday. They translated world and U.S. news into Polish, peppering it with neighborhood items.
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Cut from the Same Cloth
“Turkey Tracks” is a 19th-century quiltmaking pattern that has the appearance of little wandering feet. Patterns like the tracks, and their traditions and myths, have been passed down through the generations, from their frontier beginnings to today, where a generation of makers has embraced the material as a means of creating something new. Olivia Jondle is one such designer. Here, she’s taken an early turkey track-pattern quilt, cut it into various shapes, and stitched the pieces together, adding calico and other fabric remnants as needed. The result is a trench coat she calls the Pale Calico Coat. Her designs are for sale at The Rusty Bolt, Jondle’s small-batch fashion company based in St. Louis. —SAMANTHA STEVENSON
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