In the 1920s and ’30s, hotel bartenders were inventing what at the time seemed like out-there concoctions (the martini, the Bloody Mary) that have since become our go-to salvation. To commemorate these signature drinks, hotels like the Savoy in London and the Waldorf Astoria in New York started printing limited-edition runs of their various recipes. Avid collector Luke Ives Pontifell, founder of the bespoke New York stationer Thornwillow Press, let us shoot a few of his favorites, including volumes of punches and fizzes from the nineteenth century, Czech manuals for distilling eau-de-vie, and iconic Jazz Age classics such as Wiley and Griffith’s The Art of Mixing. “I travel constantly for work, and you never know where they’ll turn up,” says Pontifell. “I bought The Savoy Cocktail Book in London and The Stork Club Bar Book in a barn in the Berkshires. I’ve found great ones in the bookstalls of Hamburg and London and rummaging in secondhand bins from Paris to Prague.”
