"Everything I Do is Me" - Gwen Frostic
Greeting card created by famed Michigan artist Gwen Frostic, circa 1980 / THF719491
Born in 1906 in Sandusky, Michigan, Sara Gwendolen Frostic lived a many-faceted life. An unidentified illness contracted while still an infant—later assumed to be a mild case of polio, although it also may have been a fever that resulted in cerebral palsy—left Gwen with some physical differences; still, Gwen never considered herself disabled. After her family moved to Wyandotte in 1917, Gwen was exposed to both the sophisticated atmosphere of urban Detroit, and the lush botanical splendor of her family's garden. These two influences would be reflected throughout Gwen’s life, as she became both a successful businesswoman and a well-known advocate for nature.
Despite attending Michigan State Normal College and Western State Normal College (now Western Michigan University), Gwen left school without completing her degree, opting instead to create a metalworking business in her parents’ basement. Gwen’s talent soon drew attention: the Detroit YMCA asked her to teach metalworking classes, Clara Ford commissioned her to make two copper vases, and Monsanto requested that she create a piece for their 1939 World’s Fair display.
Greeting card created from linoleum block carved by Gwen Frostic / THF719495
When World War II redirected the supply of copper that Gwen had been using for her metalwork, she turned to linoleum block printing. Using a press that she disassembled and reassembled to learn how it worked, Gwen began printing commercial letterhead, stationery, and business cards; in between commercial jobs, she sketched her own nature designs and carved them into linoleum blocks. By the war’s end, Gwen was living in the back of her print shop—a set-up that she would continue in for the rest of her life. The business for which she would become most known— Presscraft Papers—had been born.
“Merry Christmas!,” 1955 / THF716787
After the death of her father in 1954, Gwen moved to Frankfort in northern Michigan, setting up a small shop downtown. In addition to selling her nature prints to the summer tourists who came to the scenic bayside town, Gwen developed a mail order trade that exponentially grew her business. In 1957, Gwen wrote her first book, My Michigan. Its style became one that she would use in all her subsequent publications: prose that is almost poetry, printed on thick, deckled paper, alongside charming natural elements printed from Gwen’s linoleum blocks.
For a woman who rarely wanted to talk about herself, her books are perhaps the closest revelation of who Gwen was: an intense thinker, enamored with the natural world around her, with an uncomplicated, pragmatic, yet optimistic view of the world.
On April 26, 1964, Gwen opened the new home of Presscraft Papers: a multi-level store built of trees, rocks, and a sod roof, set amidst a 40-acre swamp property along the Betsie River in Benzonia, Michigan. The main floor of the shop overlooked the print room, where visitors could see the Heidelberg presses that produced the stationery the store sold. On the second floor, carefully concealed from public view, was Gwen’s apartment, featuring two large screened-in porches and floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the property’s pond.
The Heidelberg presses (foreground) and handcarved linoleum blocks (back wall) used to print Gwen’s designs, 2024 / Photo courtesy of Rachel Yerke-Osgood
Despite being tucked in what many would consider to be the middle of nowhere, Gwen’s business thrived. By the 1980s, Presscraft Papers had made Gwen over a million dollars, as visitors flocked from across the state, across the country, and around the world. In addition to her business success, Gwen also received numerous awards and special recognitions. In 1978, May 23 was declared Gwen Frostic Day in Michigan. In 1986, she was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame. Rather than resting on her laurels, Gwen continued to create new designs and tend to her business well into her 90s.
In 2001—one day before her 95th birthday—Gwen passed away. Her shop remains, though, little changed from when Gwen herself lived and worked there. Much as the ducks still flock to the pond Gwen loved so much, visitors continue to flock to the store. While many come to shop, others come simply to drink in the tranquility of their surroundings and the charm of Gwen’s designs.
Gwen Frostic Prints, home of Presscraft Papers in Benzonia, Michigan / Photo courtesy of Rachel Yerke-Osgood
This, then, is the legacy that Gwen Frostic carved for herself as she carved her linoleum blocks: a gifted artist, a determined woman, and a devout lover of the natural world.
Rachel Yerke-Osgood is an associate curator at The Henry Ford.
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