Time Capsule
We can tell you what was printed. We can't tell you what it looked like on the wall. That's where you come in.
What we're after
Photographs of transfer walls. A t-shirt shop in 1971, 1977, 1983 — the rack, the rows of sheets pinned up, the heat press in the corner, the hand-lettered sign with the prices. A mall kiosk. A boardwalk stand. A head shop with the transfers by the register.
Photographs of the shirts. You, or someone you knew, wearing a shirt made from one of these sheets, back when it was new. School photos. Summer camp. The back of a van. A concert. If the transfer's visible, we want to see it.
Anything from the trade. A sample book. A rep's catalogue. An order form. A price list. A box with a printer's label on it. We've never seen a Roach Studios seasonal catalogue and we're fairly sure one existed.
Snapshots are fine. Blurry is fine. A photo of a photo is fine. What matters is that it's real and it's from then.
What we'll do with them
Put them here, credited to you or anonymous as you prefer. Match them against what we hold — if your 1976 wall shows a sheet we've got, we'll link the two. Use them to answer the questions the objects can't: how walls were hung, what sat next to what, what a shop charged.
You keep the copyright. We show them, we credit them, we don't sell them.
How to send
irononstation@gmail.com, subject line Time Capsule.
Tell us what you can: where, roughly when, whose shop, whose shirt. If you're not sure of the year, say so. A guess marked as a guess is worth more than a date that's wrong.
We're a small family business and every email gets read by a person. It might take a few days.
Why this matters
Nobody photographed transfer walls on purpose. They were furniture. The only pictures that exist are accidents — someone's shop in the background of a birthday, a rack half-visible behind a kid in a new shirt.
Those accidents are the only record of what one of the most common retail formats in America looked like from the inside. They're in shoeboxes, and the people who know what they show are getting older.
Send them before they go in the bin.
What we found in the boxes · Who printed these · All research