Each year, Groton invites an artist from outside the community to share his or her artwork with the school. The visiting artists are honored as Mudge Fellows, or people brought to the school by a fellowship in name of the Mudge family. The program is designed to introduce the Groton community to inspirational artists.

This year, between Thanksgiving and Christmas break, Mr. Luke Pontifell came from Newburgh, New York to spend two weeks at Groton as a Mudge Fellow, offering different workshops like printmaking and bookbinding. It was an honor to have him around the Circle, sharing the art of the press.

Mr. Pontifell started his printmaking business when he was only sixteen years old, after being inspired by a letterpress printing course at the Center for Book Arts in New York. Although life gets busier as people grow older, college did not hinder Mr. Pontifell’s budding passion, and he continued to make books every summer throughout his college career. As he so perfectly puts it, “what started as a hobby had become a little business.”

Mr. Pontifell thrived in his bookmaking pursuits, and he crafted books with William L. Shirer, Arthur Schlesinger, Walter Cronkite, and Helmut Kohl. While working with these fellow artists, many of the books he made were inspired from historical books from the nearby Houghton Library – the rare book library at Harvard – where he would read for hours on end, observing and exploring the nuances of the written word and the craft of the paper.

The inspiration from which his ideas grew enabled Mr. Pontifell to pursue his passion for the press, and in 1992, he travelled to the Czech Republic, where he set the basis for a paper mill and wrote papers for companies such as Montblanc, Cartier, Ralph Lauren, and Van Cleef.

Encouraged by the great companies and people with whom he worked, Mr. Pontifell worked enthusiastically with his own company, and just ten years ago made the move to Newburgh, New York, where Thornwillow Press is currently based.

The Thornwillow factory, named after his family’s eighteenth century farm house in western Massachusetts, has now collected over thirty-two historic printmaking machines and prints everything from books to calendars to wedding invitations to White House information cards. Along with managing his hobby, Mr. Pontifell founded the Thornwillow Institute to “teach and perpetuate the related arts and crafts of the written word” by means of fellowships, internships, exhibitions, supporting publications, and artists in residence.

It was a privilege to learn from Mr. Pontifell and the art behind printmaking and book-binding, as he offered a printmaking class one Sunday and attended many art classes to teach students about the art behind the written word. Mr. Pontifell’s goal throughout the Mudge Fellow process at Groton was to bring back to light the importance and value of tangible print. As he states, “in this age of disposable and intangible communications when we delete correspondence, store memories in a cloud, and literally turn books on and off with a switch, I believe the book – the handwritten note – things that you keep, touch, interact with are more relevant than ever.”

It is his hope that even in our ever-changing world, with the evolution of technology, we can better understand and recognize the beauty of paper and the meaning behind printed words. “We are committed to making things that are beautiful,” said Mr. Pontifell, speaking for his company, “that last and enhance the relationship between the reader and the written word, that memorialize moments and ideas.”

Some of the most special and impressive books Mr. Pontifell has printed are history books by Edmund Morris, William Venden Heuvel, Barack Obama, and the 1963 March on Washington by Harry Belafonte, fiction novels by John Updike, J.P. Donleavy, and Louis Auchincloss, and poetry by James Merrill and Mark Strand.

When Mr. Pontifell came to visit Groton, he brought beautiful prints of poems, books hundreds of years old, and crisp white stock cards with royal blue engravings of the White House etched on their fronts, which the President signs and the White House hands out when people visit. Thornwillow Press has successfully printed every one of these cards since President George H.W. Bush was in office and recently, Thornwillow printed an order for Michelle Obama.

The Thornwillow Press’ factory is held in a large, beautiful, old brick building on a sidestreet in the charming town of Newburgh. Inside, the smell of fresh paper and ink cuts through the air as the immense steel machines create the carefully crafted letters from which knowledge is gained.