Bucking the Trend With Bricks and Mortar: Swarthmore Native Opens Art and Paper Store

Caroline Stockman at her new store, Of Aspen. Photo: Danielle Mervine

“I love this!” Caroline Stockman holds up a pen. “They have square barrels. And they come with this little stand, which I think is amazing.” 

Pens and other art supplies, along with notebooks, tote bags, mugs, and enamel pins, are the main merchandise in Stockman’s new store, Of Aspen, which opened in Swarthmore last month. Stockman is an artist herself, and Of Aspen specializes in products she uses and loves. “Through the years, I’ve found a lot of products that I live by,” she says.

Stockman’s wares come from artists and small companies across the country and around the world. Some have helped her in school: Cognitive Surplus, a company based in Portland, Oregon, that specializes in stationery for science, makes notebooks whose beautifully illustrated covers inspired her to take better notes in class. She is now finishing her last semester at Millersville University, where classes are all remote because of COVID-19. 

Being back home in Swarthmore spurred her to get the business off the ground. She’s run an online shop for over a year out of the attic of the house where she grew up. The attic “is where I do everything,” she explains. “I take pictures, I wrap the packages.” 

As the business expanded, she needed more space to spread out. She found such a space at 107 Rutgers Ave., down the alley behind the Swarthmore Post Office. At first, she thought she would just use the room as an office. “Then, I thought, if I’m going to be there wrapping packages, and doing all of this for my online orders, I would love to have people come in and shop.”

Growing Up in Swarthmore

Stockman was born in Aspen, Colorado (thus the store’s name), but grew up in Swarthmore, which she describes approvingly as “a very artsy place.” She spent a lot of time on the Swarthmore College campus, drawn to the Scott Arboretum’s trees and flowers. “That was our backyard.”

When she was young, Stockman’s interest in art was nurtured by Swarthmore-Rutledge School art teacher Brad Hosbach, who also lives in Swarthmore and runs a small design and T-shirt business. She credits Strath Haven High School teacher Jen Rodgers with encouraging her to try new ideas. “She would give us a concept, then let you go way out of the lines,” Stockman recalls. 

Stockman enjoyed taking ideas in unusual directions. Every week Rodgers would give the class a sketchbook project: “A quick little prompt. Like, do something with the color red.” But instead of drawing something in her sketchbook, Stockman “got an old book, and glued four or five hundred matches onto it in a herringbone design, the colored tips representing red to me,” she remembers. “It sounds a little bit crazy, but it was really, really pretty.”

Caroline Stockman signing the lease for 107 Rutgers Ave. Photo: Rob Borgstrom

A Romance With Paper

Stockman’s store carries a wide range of notebooks, journals, and planners. “There’s comfort and romance with paper,” Stockman says. She thinks people her age — despite loving their phones — value the tactility of writing on paper. “It’s important to have something you can physically hold and keep near and dear to you.”

Pens are important too. She loves Tombow dual brush pens, which can be used for calligraphy or (with water) to paint. These come in a large set costing hundreds of dollars, but Stockman also sells them one or two at a time in custom palettes that change each month — dusty rose and cappuccino last September, for example. “People like collecting them,” she says. “Then, as they work in their journals, they send me pictures of what they created.”

Rather than making their own selections, some regular customers prefer Stockman choose for them. Her “mystery boxes” come at a variety of price points. People describe their enthusiasms to guide her. “They could say, I really like nature. And I like bees, and my favorite color is yellow.” Sometimes repeat customers rely on her knowing them from past orders. She considers it a compliment that “this person I’ve never met from Alaska is asking me to send them something that they’d like.” She calls this one of the best parts of the job.

She also appreciates the range of tasks the business requires, from choosing products and connecting with artists, to marketing, to accounting, to remodeling her space. Working with her father, she built bookcases and put in a new wood floor. “I like learning how to do it all,” she says.

In a bit of serendipity, Of Aspen’s grand opening falls very close to Stockman’s 22nd birthday. She says, “It’s going to be a present to myself, opening a store.”