In 2003, shortly after my maternal grandmother passed away, I was helping my mother sort through a gigantic bin of stuff from my grandparent’s house. Many people would think it was trash, but in our family we can’t throw anything away until it has been thoroughly examined for sentimental value. That can be a curse (it usually is), but occasionally it pays off. There were all sorts of goodies in that bin: gas mileage records from my grandparents’ car in the 1960s, stationery from the Milwaukee Road railroad where my grandfather worked, a list of 20s and 30s song lyrics that my grandfather had memorized years ago…
Then, I found the book!
My grandmother’s baby book, filled out after her birth in 1917 by my great-grandmother Mildred Grimm Kistner, aka Granny “Kistner”. No one in our family had ever seen it before. I wish I could have gone through it for the first time with my grandmother, she would have been amused by how much I loved it. I remember opening it and gasping over how beautiful the book was. Every page had something amazing to look at and read. I had never seen anything like it: the illustrations, the poetry, the thick paper, my great-grandmother’s cursive hand and the irreplaceable record of my grandmother’s first years.
I pored over the book and couldn’t stop thinking about it for days, wondering if there were other baby books on the market like this very special one. I decided it was worth investigating and scoured Chicago and its suburbs searching through book stores and baby boutiques, coming up empty handed each time. Next, I bought magazines like American Baby, Parents, Pregnancy and Baby, Cookie (remember Cookie!), Junior Pregnancy and Baby from the UK and others, looking for something, anything that came close to the treasure I had discovered. There was nothing else like it.
I knew I had to do something to share this amazing book! I showed it to my extended family and told them I wanted to see if it would be possible to reproduce the book. They loved the idea, and so it began.
My background is in art and film and I knew nothing about how books were made in 1904, when Mother Stork’s Baby Book was first published, much less one hundred years later in the digital age. Undaunted, I set off to learn how to get it done. I read books about publishing and copyright law, and books about Photoshop and InDesign. I called printers across the United States and learned about the incredible amount of work I would have to do before even approaching the printing process.
My first job was to scan every page of the book. I had to edit each image pixel by pixel because the 100-year-old paper was terribly discolored. I can’t even remember how long that took, but during that process I also had to learn all about the paper business and every other detail involved in the printing process.
Once I finished all of that editing I created some mini mock-up books and hit the road. I shopped the mock-up books around in NYC and Boston, where I got a lot of positive feedback. Then I headed west to San Francisco and shops in Berkeley, Mill Valley, and Noe Valley, where my best-friend lived. The biggest fan of the book was Lily Kanter of Mill Valley Baby & Kids Company (This was before the birth of her mega-success with Serena & Lily). Lily said she would order it if I produced it, and that was enough for me.
I knew that the company I was creating had to be named something that evoked an earlier, simpler time, and suggested a family run operation. I chose Kistner Supply named for the feed-store that my great-grandparents ran in central Florida during two world wars, the depression and for decades after. They provided much needed goods for the farming community and they worked very hard for what they earned. Their dedication and hard work exemplified the values I wanted to emulate in creating the best.
It was very important to me to produce the book in the United States. I knew it would be less expensive to print it elsewhere, but keeping the work close to home is important to me. I picked paper made at a mill in Wisconsin and the printer I finally selected produced everything in Michigan. I had a lot to figure out but had fairly patient vendors. Once the book was on its way to the press I needed to decide how to present this amazing product to my future customers. More on the final product later, next up…..
CHAPTER 2, THE ILLUSTRATIONS OF MOTHER STORK’S BABY BOOK