Our new Spring Essentials Pouches combine antique textiles inside and waxed canvas outside or vice versa. Each is paired with a springy vintage zipper. Another Choose Your Own Adventure!

Last summer we found a little stack of antique German textiles that was irresistible – there were blues and reds, a variety of plaid pillow shams and bedspreads. They were used to pack antique furniture en route from Germany to America, and after transport, were sitting neatly folded and severely neglected – until I spied them.

If you love pouches then you are in for a treat! We cut up the textiles and incorporated them into our Essentials Pouch. Use one for pens, pencils and art supplies and another for balms and tinctures. Pouches help to organize our bags and lives into satisfying little pockets – it is hard to be without them and you can never have too many.

Scarlet No. 1	Scarlet No. 2

Blue No. 1	Blue No. 2

Scarlet No. 3	Scarlet No. 4

Shop our other pouch styles!

Worlds open up. Always. A constant flurry of curious human beings, their voices quite muffled from the years gone by, drift my way. I hadn’t heard the name Anna Atkins until the New York Public Library asked us to collaborate on a collection of treasures inspired by her work. I’ve been wrapped up in her ever since.

Anna Atkins was the first person to use photography to illustrate a book. Note – NOT the first woman, but the first human! She was an incredible illustrator and had illustrated some books for her father, but the discovery of Cyanotypes sent her into a new obsession. She began making photographic images of her extensive seaweed collection in 1843. She created thousands of cyanotypes and sent them to libraries and other institutions in the mid-1800s for their collections – many of which remain today, including, of course, the collection at the New York Public Library!

If you can make it to the New York City, stop in and see the exhibit!

Laser-Engraved Seaweed Keeper Pouch	Laser-Engraved Seaweed Desk Caddy
Seaweed Decoupage Desk Caddy	Pocket Journals with Seaweed
Limited Vintage Leather Seaweed Engraved Book Necklace	Limited Vintage Leather Seaweed Engraved Book Necklace

Our Tintype journals sold out in 25 minutes! Thank you all for your enthusiasm! We are planning another batch for December launch, so sign up for our newsletter here!

We also will keep vintage variations in stock in our leather journals section. 

What other types of journals would you like to see? Let us know in the comments!

I have always been a lover of lost faces. Perhaps it can be attributed to early morning photography lessons with my dad as he tirelessly explained depth of field, aperture, and shutter speed on his old Petri – before running to (or the worst – chasing and honking at) the school bus. Then there were weekend flea market excursions with my mom, where we gathered frames, photographs, and oddities abandoned from other people’s lives to decorate our house.  Or maybe it was the exploration of abandoned houses, a pastime my mom and I enjoyed sparingly, but that came to consume me once I got my driver’s license. Whatever the origins, the desire to rescue portraits of gone people has manifested itself within me. 

Whilst making this new batch of Tintype journals and thinking about these lost souls, this passage from David Eaglemen's Sum, replayed over and over in my mind.

“There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.”

What about these faces, whose names have likely already been spoken for the last time – did they stave off that final death the moment they sat for the photographer? And what of that stillness, that stretched moment – the resulting grim countenance, presumably an inaccurate portrayal of gloom and doom that has come to mark the personalities of so many of this era. 

In an effort to rescue these strange survivors, we’ve given them new names, a formal frame, and a cover of their own – your own – on a blank book. This strange assemblage, this mash-up of human history is ever-characteristic of the work we do at Peg and Awl and of course – ’tis the season – Happy Hallowe’en!

All journals are sold out!  Sign up for our Newsletter to find out when the next batch is launching!!

...In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth…
   —T.S. Eliot from the Four Quartets, East Coker
  
We’ve done it! We’ve completely cleared out of our olde building, The Atlas Casket Factory, our home for the last 5 years and into our new space – The Foundlings Building! We’ve hauled every last tool, big and small, and every last maker into our new space – our open, air flowing, beautifully bright new home with parking and sunshine and in Port Richmond, Philadelphia. And it has all happened in less than a year!

Walter, Joe, Chris and Josh, as well as a handful of others, have been transforming the space over the last 9 months and still, we’ve all managed to make and design and send most* orders out without delay. We are incredibly fortunate to have such a wonderfully talented, efficient and productive team as well as our supportive following – you! Our new space will no doubt be an inspiring place to create more treasures, photographs, jobs, and joyful days. And in time – a garden!

In addition to the building and the land, there is an elevated train track that borders one side of the property and the wall has already become the most fantastic backdrop for our new photographs.

We named the building Foundlings, as it is my hope to discover much about this tiny piece of land, both through the locals’ stories, and hopefully (look for me with a metal detector or a privy stick!) underground. Our acre was carved out in the early 1800s, as evidenced by some old maps (PhilaGeoHistories). There were homes built upon it and torn down, and sometime between 1934 and 1942, our building was erected as the new home of The Phoenix Dye Works. In the 1980s it was closed up (maybe even before), and in it grew a darkness, loaded with stuff and years of stories. When Walter tore through the ceiling to put in skylights, the dirt and dust came alive, dancing in a beam of sunlight eager to discover new territories.

It is 2017, and at Peg and Awl, we are ready to begin building our new stories...