A Peek at our Latest Spirit of Franklin Print

We’ve been working hard on the designs for our new Spirit of Franklin Collection—we are almost finished with 4 illustrated prints. In a few weeks, we’ll be going to press to produce limited edition prints of these new designs. Then we will start selling them in stores and on our new Spirit Of Franklin site. 

The Spirit of Franklin Collection aims to celebrate the history and charm of Franklin, TN through a collection of 12 illustrated prints. To do that, we are covering a range of themes like architecture,  historic sites, festivals and favorite local establishments.

One very important historical Franklin icon is the Carnton Plantation, battle field and cemetery. Since this landmark was established in the 1800s, the rendering style needs to resemble art from that era. In the past, we accomplished a 19th century look on a few Spirit of Nashville prints done by Abe Goolsby when he was a staff artist. Abe’s masterful pen and ink art gave a distinctive old-world look to our Union Station, State Capitol and Belle Meade Plantation prints.  

So for the Carnton design, Joel Anderson used the same old techniques starting with reference photos he shot on location. Like Abe, Joel painstakingly rendered an ink cross-hatched drawing, then created typography and line art similar that what might have been used back in the 1800s. Joel paid homage to his old buddy Abe by re-using line art of clouds from his 2005 State Capitol print.

More Franklin prints are in the works. Stay tuned to see the entire collection as we unveil it. Look for it in stores and on our web sites starting in May!