History
Mrs. John L. Strong (née Flora Feldstein) established her eponymous firm in the aftermath of the stock market crash of 1929. Joining forces with her sister, the owner of a luxury trousseau shop called Bournefield Linens, Mrs. Strong began selling wedding and social papers to New York's elite from Bournefield's location at 57th Street and Fifth Avenue.
Mrs. Strong's business soon outstripped the space at Bournefield, and she moved her location twice, first to 714 Madison Avenue, and later to the landmark 699 Madison Avenue, originally built as a New York home for the firm Fortnum & Mason, where the firm remains with a fifth floor atelier for private clients and a duplex ground floor boutique.
Mrs. Strong joined the "Street of Shops" on the first floor at Henri Bendel's in the 1950s. Mrs. Strong also sold through Gump's Department store in San Francisco. From her locations Mrs. Strong created papers for the Duke of Windsor and Wallis, The Duchess of Windsor, Barbara Hutton, the Rockefeller, Astor, Vanderbilt, and DuPont families, as well as Bette Davis, Diana Vreeland, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Barbara Paley, and other icons of style.
After the death of Mrs. Strong in 1979, the firm was sold by Strong's heirs to Robert and Joy Lewis. As director, Joy Lewis maintained Strong's standards of quality, refusing to adopt modern methods, and preserving vital techniques of the crafts of artist-engraving and hand-stamping. The Lewises brought master engraver Fred Diefenbach to the firm, where he created dies for twenty years before retiring from engraving in his 90's, leaving Mrs. Strong with one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of dies from the 19th through the 20th century. The firm now boasts a collection of thousands of artist-engraved dies.
In 2002, the company was purchased by financier Jeffrey Lubin and his wife, designer Nannette Brown. Since 2002, Brown has pioneered the launch of seasonal collections based on fashion trends, known as "ready to write" collections, and has expanded the offerings of the company at its various locations by creating new goods in leather and silver. The company continues to expand, attracting an ever-younger and more fashion-oriented clientele, including important fashion designers, architects, artists, and interior designers, in addition to its long-standing clientele of social and international leaders.
On May 21, 2009, Nannette Brown announced that she would close the business.
On September 29, 2009, Crain's New York Business reported that the brand had been purchased in an auction (after filing for Chapter 11 protection in the Southern District of New York in August) by Houston-based private equity firm J.P. Kotts & Co., under the name The 1929 Paper Co.
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