Tintera Opens, a Haven for Stationery Lovers in Guaynabo

Some things read better on paper, like a love letter or a handwritten birthday card. For designer and artist Gina Cercone, a Pittsburgh native, paper has always been a refuge.

She studied design in Boston, made hats in New York, then designed costumes for Broadway and later for Hollywood productions such as Star Trek. She married Eric, an engineer from Ponce, and together they moved to Puerto Rico to start a family.

True to her love of letters, she opened Tintera on Oct. 24, a neo-English-feeling corner shop in Plaza Caparra whose name is the feminine form of the Spanish word for inkwell.

With an investment of $40,000 and three part-time employees, the shop brings together everything from hand-illustrated cards to Japanese Hobonichi planners. Most of its more than 200 brands, from Japan, Italy, England, Latin America and the United States, come from women artists.

"I am a woman and I am also an artist. I think there are many artists here in Puerto Rico, in the United States, in the world, who don't have a space for their art," she tells Platea.

What You'll Find at Tintera

Cercone cares as much about the product as about the hands that make it. That's why she looks for small businesses that still work by hand, from their own studios, and she took the time to get to know each brand up close. "I have more than 200 brands. Every single one of them I have personally contacted," she says.

The atmosphere. With dark wood furniture, bronze lamps and flowers in wine and ochre tones, the shop's atmosphere tells Cercone's story and her love of letters.

She grew up surrounded by handwritten cards: her mother and grandmother sent her one for every special occasion, and her father still leaves her mother a note at least once a week. At the top of a bookshelf, framed, sits her grandmother's calligraphy certificate.

What you'll find

• For writing: lined notebooks, dot-grid notebooks and blank-page notebooks, planners, financial planners, recipe books, ballpoint pens, pencils, mechanical pencils, markers, fountain pens and ink.

• For decorating: cards, watercolors, washi tapes, stickers and paper decorations, including hanging skeletons that a Scottish brand prints and paints by hand.

“Es como el sueño de organizar tu oficina, el de quiero escribir lo que siento, quiero organizar mi vida, solo quiero tener en las manos algo bonito que me haga feliz. Eso es lo que trato de hacer en la tienda”

Where the idea came from. "I knew that if I was having a bad day and wanted to go somewhere that would make me feel better, I always went to a stationery store," she says.

After arriving in Puerto Rico, she missed the specialty stationery stores she used to frequent in cities like Los Angeles and New York. So she decided to create her own.

She got her first business permit, started buying wholesale and went out to sell at Mercado Miramar, at Marina Market and at Christmas bazaars.

When the boxes no longer fit in the house, she made the leap to her own space with an interest-free loan from Kiva, arranged through Causa Local.

Then she discovered she wasn't alone. "There are many, many people here in Puerto Rico who feel the same way. It's a community of people who also love paper," she says.

An inkwell for Puerto Rican artists

The markets taught Cercone what it costs to build a business in Puerto Rico. Every weekend she set up her table in sun or rain, often without electricity. Around her, other small vendors did the same.

"The people who are here running small businesses and working the markets are the strongest, most resilient people," she says.

Now she wants to give back to the community that pushed her forward, with a space in her shop. Her website has a form for Puerto Rico brands to apply to sell their products at Tintera.

"The plan is for me to have a complete shelf of things from Puerto Rico, from Puerto Rican brands," she says.

This content was translated with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI).