Tiles for tourists in digital age

CHARTING A COURSE: Screencraft Tileworks has made vintage maps and nautical charts a focal point of its gift-manufacturing business. Above, company co-owners Trip Wolfskehl, left, and George Abar talk near materials used at a recent trade show. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT
CHARTING A COURSE: Screencraft Tileworks has made vintage maps and nautical charts a focal point of its gift-manufacturing business. Above, company co-owners Trip Wolfskehl, left, and George Abar talk near materials used at a recent trade show. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT

Even a dead business can have value. In fact, sometimes the age and obsolescence of an enterprise, the fact that it didn’t evolve into the next big thing, makes it worth something.
Screencraft Tileworks of Providence fit that description in 2003 when current co-owner Trip Wolfskehl stumbled on what was left of the once-thriving souvenir manufacturer for sale in Bourne, Mass.
Founded in 1952 to silkscreen tourist-trade images like the Mayflower or Paul Revere House onto ceramic tiles, Screencraft Tileworks had regressed to little more than a hobby for the wife of an owner who bought it in the 1990s.
But while Screencraft had no customers and its obsolete equipment was gathering dust in a barn, it did have a library of 3,000 images, maps and drawings, the art that all those souvenir tiles had been based on over the years.
The owner said he would sell the company for $35,000. Wolfskehl offered $2,500, and promised to remove the silkscreens, production kiln and other company possessions from the barn, which he would also clean.
It was a deal.
“The art was worth something,” said Wolfskehl, who had been drawn to Screencraft Tileworks by a childhood interest in ceramic art. “I moved everything to an old mill in Fall River and tried to revive it.”
Still using the old silkscreen technology that Screencraft had employed for decades, Wolfskehl made a tile for the city of Fall River, that gained him some notoriety and the attention of George Abar, whose own business, Abar Imaging, of Providence, was facing its own challenges with the rapid adoption of digital photography.
When Abar and Wolfskehl started talking, they realized their two businesses had a lot in common. What’s more, Abar could provide Screencraft with modern imaging and manufacturing capacity, while the latter could offer a chance to diversify the photography business into a new market.
The two became partners and Screencraft moved into Abar’s Corliss Street plant, incorporating in Rhode Island in 2005.
The new Screencraft stores its images and prints tiles digitally, improving quality, speed and the variety of what it can make. Over the years, Screencraft has expanded its catalogue to 7,000 images.
Vintage maps and nautical charts are now at the core of the Screencraft product line, forming the graphic background for tile-based coasters, clocks, trivets, Christmas ornaments, table tops, picture frames and wall murals. From conventional tiles, Screencraft has switched to “tumbled marble” made from real stone conditioned to give it a texture and color that evoke antiques.
The company’s extensive catalogue of old maps, charts, mid-century icons and advertising is now one of its assets, giving its products a unique visual style that can then be customized. But while Wolfskehl has modernized the means of production, his retail model is still fairly traditional.
As so much shopping migrates onto the Internet, Screencraft has committed to supplying brick-and-mortar stores instead of attempting to build its own online brand to sell to shoppers directly.
Part of that is the way Screencraft’s gifts, especially the maps, are location-specific.
“Our retailers have a good business model because they are in places people want to visit and have a captive audience,” Wolfskehl said. “If you are in Newport for five days, chances are you are going to want to buy something connected with Newport.”
Screencraft customizes gifts for particular stores, hiring Rhode Island artists when necessary, and combines maps with graphics to give stores location-specific merchandise. The company’s products have recently been picked up by the National Geographic catalogue and New York Times Store.
The company is building a website to fulfill special orders from customers not in the location they want the gift to reflect, such as a daughter in Arizona who wants a coaster set made from a chart of a stretch of water in Florida where her father in New York likes to fish.
Rhode Island, with its abundant ocean tourism, has proven an ideal location for Screencraft, which has merchandise in shops in Newport, Block Island, Portsmouth, Barrington and Wickford Village in North Kingstown.
For Wolfskehl, the objective is to combine traditional brick-and-mortar retail with online shopping, instead of pitting one against the other.
“I see some retailers just burying their heads in the sand when it comes to online,” Wolfskehl said. “It is real and it is happening. Let’s help them benefit from it and survive.” •

COMPANY PROFILE
Screencraft Tileworks
OWNERS: Trip Wolfskehl and George Abar
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Gift manufacturer
LOCATION: 35 Corliss St., Providence
EMPLOYEES: 11
YEAR ESTABLISHED: 1952
ANNUAL SALES: $2 million

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