Prints Charming

  

Though she toils in a tiny kitchen space on the top floor of the historic Greystone Building on Maplewood Avenue in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Jocelyn Hallstein is thinking big. Minc House, the custom design and printmaking studio she launched earlier this year under the auspices of Mission, Inc., has already earned acclaim among hipster bands trickling through Mission Bar + Tapas (located just downstairs, at street level), thanks to its funky, small-batch, screen-printed T-shirts. Now Hallstein is stretching her focus to larger canvases.

 

“My passion lies in textiles,” says the former weaver for Sam Kasten, running a nimble finger along a strip of cotton-linen fabric stamped with a vibrant red and orange pattern—a table runner inspired by a client’s watercolor painting. But, she adds, “I’m working in a closet! I can’t really do a bulk run of fabric. Because I’m limited to the space, my screens have to be smaller and my designs have to adapt.”

 

Thankfully, Minc House thrives on such limitations: block printing, stenciling, and various dyeing techniques, by definition, provide a limitless range of depth and tone, well-suited to one-of-a-kind works for the home. And all of the custom pillows—like the bold, coffee-sack-emblem-inspired cushions lining the window seat at Mission Bar—are sewn by hand.

 

“Everything that we do up here is in an effort to bring more life and energy to Pittsfield,” Hallstein says, which is why Minc House maintains an open-door policy: so visitors can observe the simple beauty created by an imperfect process.

 

“That’s what I love when I see something hand-printed,” Hallstein enthuses. “You see exactly where there was a person involved.” [SEPTEMBER 2009]

 

THE GOODS

Minc House
6 Maplewood Ave.
Suite 46
Pittsfield, Mass.