Howdy, howdy, howdy. We’ve got a few videos for you today, a Frank Lloyd Wright original*, a sports story (of course), and a Bookstarter that’s ending tomorrow.
RiverRock House
It depends on who you ask, but there may be a new Frank Lloyd Wright house. Based on plans completed shortly before he died in 1959, the RiverRock house was built just outside Cleveland earlier this year and is now available for short-term rentals. If you’d like to visit, be prepared to drop ~$1,000 / night, minimum two nights.
Fully funded with less than 24 hours to go. You can’t beat a cloth-bound book with a debossed, foil-stamped title.
The book Six Centuries of Type & Printing briskly tells the story of the evolution of type and printing, starting with early documented efforts and surviving artifacts from China and Korea, and introducing Gutenberg and his innovations. It then takes you through each generation of increasing sophistication in metal and relief printing until the abrupt 20th century shift into flat offset printing, which was made possible through photographic and digital improvements, and phototypesetting and digital composition.
Here’s the trailer if you’re into that sort of thing. (I’m not — I want absolutely zero spoilers of any kind. Don’t even tell me what movie we’re watching.)
I’m no scientist, but how did it take this long for “make the sweet spot bigger and sweeter” to become a thing in baseball? The equipment improvements in golf and other sports have been relentless. I realize baseball tends to be more change-averse, but really? Anyway, congratulations to Aaron Leanhardt for building a better bat.
Before Cotton Bureau was a twinkle in anyone’s eye, Jay and I started a little web design shop here in Pittsburgh called Full Stop Interactive. This was back in early 2009, around the time of what some people now call “The Global Financial Crisis”. (No reason in particular to mention this.) Despite the dire times, our pitch to anyone who inquired about our services was simple: we make the best websites in Pittsburgh, period.
While our branding was locally-oriented, our ambitions were anything but. We felt our work was as good as you could find on the Internet. So when asked what we did, it was easy to describe and easy to understand. We owned a small business making websites. Jay was the designer; I was the developer.
Cotton Bureau 1.0
Fast forward to 2013 and the launch of Cotton Bureau. We now had a new thing, which meant a new way of thinking about ourselves and communicating that concept to others. Still, keeping it simple and in line with our principles, we weren’t shy about telling people who Cotton Bureau was for, and, equally important, who Cotton Bureau was not for. We helped designers and design-adjacent communities sell t-shirts, typically in two week pre-order periods.
A funny thing started to happen though as soon as we drew that line in the sand. Every time we told someone that we made t-shirts, they invariably replied “Oh? I need t-shirts.” To which we were forced to reply, well, I’m sure you do, but actually we don’t help just anyone make t-shirts. You need to be a designer.
The first time that happens, it’s just awkward. The next few dozen times it happens, at least you know what’s coming next and can steer the conversation appropriately. Once you get into the hundreds, you really start to dread answering at all. Eventually you begin to wonder, isn’t there some way that we could help all these people who clearly just need someone reliable to lend a hand?
Cotton Bureau 2.0
The story of the next generation of Cotton Bureau has been told before, so I won’t belabor it. In 2015, we sold our first on demand t-shirt, though at the time they were limited to kids tees. In 2018 and 2019 we fully embraced on demand as the future of online apparel retail.
Since then we’ve carefully vetted partners and expanded our catalog to include phone cases, totes, drinkware, mugs, and embroidered hats. The Cotton Bureau 2.0 era has now, impossibly, been roughly the same length as the Cotton Bureau 1.0 era. Pre-order campaigns were our entire identity from 2013–2019. The last six years has seen a migration to on demand and a diversification of product types.
Sitting here in early 2025, we still see several viable categories that make a lot of sense to add, and we have multiple projects in flight to bring even more high quality products to the lineup. Which is why it’s time to talk about the third evolution of the Cotton Bureau platform.
Cotton Bureau 3.0
As the list of offerings has grown, the conversations have, perhaps not surprisingly, continued to bewilder friends, family, and potential Cotton Bureau creators. While we insist on maintaining an exceptionally high rate of rejection (at least three quarters if not 90% of all submissions are summarily dismissed), we found ourselves wondering, isn’t there a way to let the parent-teacher association for your kid’s elementary school sell a t-shirt without it compromising the integrity of the website? If you need a dozen mugs for your company Christmas party, is it absolutely essential that the artwork adheres to our admittedly esoteric design approval standards? When you’re pulling hundreds of people together to run in a charity 5K, don’t you deserve the same unwavering commitment to quality that defines our on demand embroidered hats?
When we realized the answer to all of those questions was a resounding “yes”, it became clear that we needed to find a way to expand access to Cotton Bureau without sacrificing any of what mattered most: searching and browsing Cotton Bureau should showcase only the best designs. We remain fully committed to curating that experience. We believe a meaningful part of the value of Cotton Bureau is narrowing the aperture not widening it.
Custom
Which brings us to the major change to how Cotton Bureau works that we are announcing today. Previously, all accounts were manually approved by a Cotton Bureau team member before going live on the site. While that remains true for the core Cotton Bureau experience, we are opening a second point of entry to Cotton Bureau for those who don’t fit neatly into our design-focused audience.
Introducing Cotton Bureau Custom. The full power of Cotton Bureau is now available to everyone.
Say hello to Cotton Bureau Custom. Custom offers access to our entire catalog of on demand and pre-order products. We’ve even streamlined the product creator. With no account approval required, you can now be live in minutes, possibly even seconds depending on how quickly you can drag-and-drop. If you want, you can make money selling t-shirts and other goods on Cotton Bureau Custom, but you don’t have to. Cotton Bureau Custom is free to use whether you are fundraising, team building, or making a one-off design for a private party.
Bottom line: whether you sell on Cotton Bureau or Custom, your account works the same, looks the same, and includes the same exceptional level of service you have come to expect.
What’s the catch?
While it’s tempting to say “no catch”, there is, in fact, a pretty big and important catch. All Cotton Bureau Custom products are unlisted. They won’t appear if you search Cotton Bureau. They won’t show up in our featured products on the home page or in the shop gallery. For all intents and purposes, Custom products are not “on” Cotton Bureau. Think of Cotton Bureau Custom as an alternate universe. It looks like Cotton Bureau, but you’ll need to travel through a special wormhole to get there.
You can link to Cotton Bureau Custom products, of course, and it’s even possible to view all the products from a single account on the account owner’s page, but when we say Custom is the backdoor to Cotton Bureau, we mean it. In some ways, it’s really more like a code to get into the garage, except the door to get in the house itself is locked and you don’t have a key.
We view this as an unequivocally Good Thing. Over the years there have inevitably been marginal cases that have been difficult to adjudicate. Does the notoriety and/or importance of the creator require a softening of the design standards? If the first design is good, but future designs are mediocre, should the account be removed from the site? When splitting hairs between “good enough” and “not good enough”, it’s inevitable that not everyone sees eye to eye. With Custom, we’re free to continue to raise the bar on Cotton Bureau without completely foreclosing access to the tools we have created for those who need them.
So. We’re pleased to finally have a simple answer to a simple question.
It should go without saying that even Custom accounts must abide by the Cotton Bureau terms of service, and we reserve the right to remove any account at any time for content that is offensive or inconsistent with our principles.
Hey, everyone, it’s the one-year anniversary of Hand-Picked Links. The first edition was published on April 1, 2024. There were a total of 17 links posts in the past year. Without further ado, please enjoy this week’s #content.
As someone born, raised, and still residing in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, I’m quite familiar with and have personally benefited from the philanthropy of one of the giants of the first Gilded Age, Andrew Carnegie. The global network of libraries he funded helped democratize information and remain committed to the goal of cultivating learning in local communities over a 125 years later. (Today’s infuriating system of digital rights management prevents free distribution of ebooks today, doing the exact opposite.)
Over 6,000 words and 600 photos from Marcin Wichary, author of Shift Happens, on Gorton, a strange family of letters engraved directly into a multitude of materials across the globe and even into outer space.
If you’ve ever played a casual round of Scrabble with friends, you know at the end of the day whoever has memorized the most words is going to win. What if you had a photographic memory? You could be the best Scrabble player in the world, even if you didn’t speak the language of the country you were playing in, like Nigel Richards.
Hey, Martha! We last interviewed you way back in 2015, which was a lifetime ago. I’m curious where your head is at now. Between politics and pandemics, it feels like art for art’s sake has been displaced. Have you been able to keep working and growing, or are we all stuck in this limbo forever?
Hello there!
I actually think art for art's sake is more important and prominent than ever. I am making more stuff for fun to keep me connected to humanity and being human. I see people doing crafts and experimenting, making things with their hands all over the place. Never forgetting our humanness is the reason why I can keep working and changing. Since 2015, I've done more work in wood, doing installations, using cut paper and now I am exploring working in metal. Art for art's sake is keeping me sane and hopeful!
I love the metal work! Can you share a little about the tools and techniques that go into creating those pieces?
I feel a bit like I am cheating but basically I draw the shapes and I have a place that cuts them out of weathering steel using water and ground garnets. It's pretty cool. I also have a friend who owns a foundry and he gave me a piece of wax that I am going to carve into something. Then we're going to make a mold and create a metal sculpture. I am slightly intimidated by it so I am basically just staring at the wax for the time being. It will happen when it is ready to happen.
Oh, sculpture, that does sound intimidating. We recently visited Florence, seeing the statues completely exceeded my expectations. I can’t even imagine turning a chunk of marble into something like Michelangelo’s David.
Okay, change of subject… it seems like we really can’t avoid politics these days even if it would be healthier for us all if we could. You chose to release two new shirts, Stand with Ukraine and Stand Up for Each Other, that seem to have struck a chord with people.What made you decide to get involved in this way?
Well I have been involved in my local community for a while now. I'm an elected Democratic Committee person for the 2nd ward in Philly. I make the posters and collateral for our GOTV efforts. So this was just putting my skills online instead. It is crucial for more people to get active and there are so many different ways to do it. The more of us who speak out the better.
Absolutely. We’re coming up quickly on the 250 year anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The one thing we have always been able to rely on is our ability to speak openly without fear of government retaliation and the ultimate accountability of those who hold office to the people through regular, free elections. The only way to uphold that tradition is to continue voting and speaking out against violations of or threats to those rights.
Can you tell me more about your time working for the GOTV Committee? I would love to hear how you got involved and what your experience has been.
Ha don't get me started!
After the 2016 election I wanted to get involved, I found out you could run for office in Philadelphia, either as judge of elections or as a Democratic committee person. I chose the latter. Philly is broken up into wards and in the wards there are divisions. Each division has two committee people. You have to go out and get signatures and you get on the ballot. I did and I won. In old school Philly all the wards were closed and pretty much you do what the established Democrat leaders wanted. This changed a bit after the 2016 election, the 2nd Ward went open along with a few other wards. This means we do everything democratically and vote on everything and are transparent about everything, like spending funds, endorsing candidates etc. (in the closed wards you do what the ward leader says and that is it). The main thing we do is vet candidates, fundraise for them and get Democrats out to vote and get information out about elections and stuff happening in Philly. We also help people at the polls. It is a pretty cool thing to do.
My main contribution is the collateral we do to help with GOTV. I make posters, and door hangers that are a little more interesting than the usual political crap. Here is our website. One of the biggest problems in our country is people not paying attention to who is running for the municipal and local offices like district attorneys and judges and school boards. I am sounding like a politics nerd but if more people got involved we would end up with less crappy people running things. Here are examples.
No worries, I’m a big politics nerd! (My degree is actually in Political Science and Economics not Running a T-Shirt Website, believe it or not.) The big elections get all the attention, but it’s really the small elections that have the most overall impact.
But back to a less exhausting topic. I was looking through your portfolio and noticed that much of your work is oriented around the natural world, like the book you illustrated for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles and your frequent use of plants and animals. Is that intentional for you, or do you find that you gravitate towards those themes subconsciously?
Plants and animals are much more fun to draw lately. What I do is based mostly on what I feel like drawing at the moment. I am never trying to convey something. If a message is conveyed it is purely accidental or maybe my subconscious brain wanted that message out there.
Let’s wrap this conversation up with my favorite question: how do you think generative AI will impact your art in the future? For a lot of working designers, AI seems like a major threat. It steals and reproduces without regard for individual ownership, and it does it instantly. We have a more or less zero-AI policy for Cotton Bureau, but at the end of the day it’s only something we can ask people to respect rather than truly enforce. How do you see it? Will you take advantage of these new tools, or do you expect to keep your distance?
Pardon my french. I will keep my fucking distance. I hate it. It really is stealing. And in a just world the frickin AI tech bros would be forced to pay artists and writers a lot of money for the use of their work. Transfer that AI wealth to the folks who without their hard work, AI would be worth nothing. I don't know how it will affect me because I make most of my stuff by hand. And I have no choice but to keep making things. Artificial intelligence is artificial. I guess it appeals to the folks who like astroturf in their yards. I don't know. Human creativity will always be better.
I couldn’t agree more. I always come back to Kevin Kelly’s Better Than Free essay. While it is almost 20 years old now, the very first line is perhaps more true now than ever before: “The internet is a copy machine.”
At the time, he was talking about how zero costs for duplication affect how you can charge for your work, but the advice is still 100% accurate: “When copies are free, you need to sell things which can not be copied.”
Just because someone can reproduce your work with AI doesn’t mean that’s what people actually want. Supporting the artist (e.g. 1,000 True Fans), should still drive meaningful income because only can you provide a genuine experience. I believe people are incredibly sensitive to authenticity and will continue to reward people who create original art.
Thank you so much (again) for your time! Now that you’ve been doing this for 20+ years, do you have any advice for people just getting started to match your longevity?
My advice is make work that you want and not work you think people want. Sometimes it'll work out and sometimes it doesn't and that never really changes. Just keep making stuff. Also surround yourself with cool people.
Well said. Let’s do this again in 2035!
P.S. Use code featurefriday20 for 20% off all Martha Rich products now through Friday, March 21!
In like a lion, out like a lamb. It sure has been nice to get some sun and warm weather in Western PA. Here’s a look at some of the most interesting things we saw over the last few weeks.
Creative Works WEST
Guess who’s the official t-shirt partner for Creative Works in Seattle? It’s us. Come say hello, get a free (with the low, low price of admission) t-shirt.
With the season finale of Severance tomorrow, enjoy this look back at the cinematography of one of the best episodes of the year, “Chikhai Bardo”, directed by Jessica Lee Gagné.
Having spent countless hours crossing oceans and continents in regular old airplanes (which is still incredible, to be fair), it sure would be nice to do it in half the time. I’d love to see Boom succeed in restoring supersonic commercial flights. We won’t know for years if they can make the technology work, much less build a successful business. Still, it’s about time someone tried.
Thanks for reading! We hope you found it worth your while. Don’t forget to follow @cottonbureau.com on Bluesky. We can’t be held responsible for what happens to those who don’t.
