Luke Pontifell

President & Publisher, Thornwillow Press, Ltd.

Entrepreneurs

Native New Yorker Luke Ives Pontifell founded Thornwillow Press in 1985, when he was 16 and still in high school. He has designed, printed and published handmade, limited-edition books ever since, working with such distinguished authors as John Updike, Walter Cronkite, Barack Obama and Peter Matthiessen. One of the most recognized private presses operating in the United States today, Thornwillow’s books are in the permanent collections of The White House, The Morgan Library, The British Library and the Vatican.

Today Thornwillow Press is based in a complex of 19th-century factory buildings near the Hudson River in Newburgh, New York. It is, Luke explains, "artisanal village that brings all the related crafts of the book and the written word together under one roof." Here, dedicated artisans perpetuate the crafts of hand-engraving, letterpress-printing, decorative papermaking, gilding, leather bookbinding and fine-press publishing. The company also has two intimate library galleries, Thornwillow at the St. Regis, in New York and in Washington, DC, where visitors can stop for a refreshing drink and browse through the carefully curated collection of limited-edition books and portfolios, order custom stationery and bindings, and subscribe to new publications.

In addition to his job as publisher, Luke supports Everybody Wins! New York, a charity founded in 1991 to promote children’s literature through shared reading experiences with caring adults.

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https://www.thornwillow.com/site