Well-Read Life™

Behind the Lens at Levenger: Howard & Judy Gale

There is a married couple at Levenger whose photo does not appear in the catalog but whose creativity is all over it. This couple leads the Levenger photo studio that produces all the photos in our catalogs, on our website and throughout our stores. They are Howard and Judy Gale, and they have been behind the lens at Levenger since 1995.

How Levenger came to be the beneficiary of their talents goes back more than 50 years.

John C. Gale & Son, Photographers

Howard’s father, John Gale, opened his photo studio at 902 Walnut Street in Philadelphia in the early 1950s. He specialized in product photography used for advertising. Shots were mainly black and white, and much of the work was in big 8-by-10-inch format. His clients included RCA, Sun Oil and Lenox China.

When Howard got out of the Army in 1965, he began to learn his father’s trade. He supplemented his father’s teaching with lots of reading and with the help of another commercial photographer, Charles Gardner. He worked with the new strobe lights, rather than the older, hot tungsten lighting his father favored.

In 1978, the business was transferred to Howard and his bride of a dozen years, the former Judith Ruth Peters. Judy began helping with the bookkeeping the way Howard’s mother had.  But Howard asked Judy if she could also help acquire props and with styling some shots. When she did, Howard liked what he saw through the lens.

“I guess I had a natural flair without knowing it,” explains Judy. “I was always sort of crafty, keeping a detailed baby book, painting the walls, and always felt the need to set up something differently—displaying my antiques in a new way, refinishing furniture. My hobbies kind of went into the business.”

Judy says she learned a lot from the art directors who worked for their various clients. “In the mid-1970s, everyone started doing more color, and things evolved into more exotic shots with lots of flowers, locations, old mansions—it went crazy.” 

Their clients grew to include DuPont, TV Guide, Black & Decker and Procter Silex. In the 1980s, the pair also took on fashion photography. But they continued to do mainly product work, including for long-time client Lenox.

‘Just come for two weeks’

The creative director of Lenox during those years was Lee Passarella, who had developed an appreciation for Howard and Judy’s work, as well as for them personally. When Lee resigned her position at Lenox to join Levenger in 1995, she longed for her old photo team in Philly. In a matter of months she asked Howard and Judy if they would take a field trip to Delray Beach to work a week or two in the Levenger studios.

Lee had an ulterior motive: to have them fall in love with Levenger and the kind of photography they could do full time, as well as to fall for Delray Beach, as Lee had done.

They came down in March, supposedly for two weeks, to shoot one catalog. “But then,” remembers Judy, “Lee said, ‘one more thing,’ and ‘just another shot, please…’”

Two weeks stretched to seven. When they finally went north again, Lee shipped more Levenger products up to their studio to continue the process of re-shooting Levenger products in a Gale style, which fit the brand so well. Howard and Judy found the work a good match for their professional style, particularly since so many Levenger products are shown alongside antiques.

Antiques for a digital century…

We use antiques in our shots to remind our customers (and ourselves) of the historic legacy of reading and writing. We aspire to create cherished antiques of tomorrow. Judy and Howard’s longtime interest in antiques fits Levenger’s photo style like a glove.

“I began collecting at age four, starting with miniature animals and salesman samples,” says Judy. Today, she supplements Levenger’s antiques collection with her own. And having toured Howard and Judy’s home, I can vouch for the vast repository she has to draw upon.

Inside their 1948 cottage in the historic section of Delray Beach, antiques are artfully displayed in every room, from floor to ceiling. The laundry room has displays of old detergent boxes from the 1950s, while the kitchen has a Kellogg’s Cereal dispenser from a diner, complete with the little boxes of Frosted Flakes and Corn Pops. Hanging from the ceiling is a buggy whip display, holding not buggy whips but antique hooks for buttoning shoes and gloves.

“People are amazed when they come to our home,” says Judy. “They often say they don’t know where to look first.”

Falling in love with Delray Beach turned out to be just as natural a fit.

“We came to Florida on our honeymoon in 1966,” says Judy. “We vacationed in Florida many times and couldn’t wait to see the first palm trees as we drove south. When we had to leave, we’d gaze woefully out the window, and dream about finding a way to work here someday.”

In the fall of 1995, Howard and Judy closed their studio up north and drove down again to Delray Beach—this time, to stay.

…and electronics to keep pace

At that point the Levenger studio, like all photo studios across America, was still shooting film. Howard used 4x5 and 8x10 Calumets, as well as a 35mm Nikon and Bronica. But soon the digital age was upon us.

“I remember the first setup we evaluated in 1996 or so,” says Howard. “It was a Leaf digital camera with hoses and cooling systems to keep the chip cold. The price tag was $100,000.”

We waited a bit, but by 2000 had converted to digital.

“Now we use 17MB Phase One H20 cameras, three of them, and of course do a lot of color-matching work in pre-press,” explains Howard.

It’s hard for any of us to imagine how we could generate the photos we do today without the speed of digital photography, given the increasing demands from our website and stores, neither of which the company had in 1995.

Visit to the studio

Visitors often marvel when they come inside our studio and see how we create room settings and closeups simulating desktops. We use the usual photo studio tricks of sliding walls, fake windows, staircases to nowhere and resin ice cubes that don’t melt under the lights.

One unusual denizen of the studio is Art the Bear. Having no room in their Delray cottage to put him up, Howard brought his black bear hunting trophy from his days up north into the studio. HR raised an eyebrow and ruled that if the bear was staying, he needed a badge. That meant a name, and since the studio is part of the Art Department, “Art” seemed a natural. He now wears his photo ID.

“He was the last animal I shot,” says Howard. He gave up hunting in 1974 and switched to shooting clay pigeons instead.

While most shots are taken in the studio, the photo team occasionally goes on location, especially for our bags, to show what they look like when worn by models in the real world.

True originals

Besides being the prop master at Levenger, Judy also props herself in a distinctive way.
Adorning her hands are 47 silver rings, which never come off, and around her neck are graduated lengths of Indian buffalo necklaces.

“My full set is 18 buffalos, but the 13 largest stay home. Otherwise they swing out and get in the way of what I’m working on,” she explains.

Howard shares Judy’s love of Indian art, and has a single silver feather earring in his left ear that he has worn since 1967. 

Invariably good natured, smiling, funny and supportive, they often find themselves being addressed as “Mom and Pop” by some of the younger staff members.

“They’re two of the most caring and giving human beings that I have been gifted with in my life,” attests our senior art director Ilene Stern, who’s worked with them since she was 26. “They go above and beyond to help you both personally and professionally.”

Dena Mullen, another photographer in the Studio, says that working alongside Howard and Judy for the past eight years “has been a treat. As a team, they are intuitive, which shows their years of collaboration.”

Having sat through more than a few photo sessions for updating the “Steve and Lori” shot in our catalog, I can attest to how Howard and Judy make what for me is a painful process almost enjoyable. They both give you lots of “greats” and “perfects,” as Howard snaps away and Judy fixes my shirt and Lori’s hair. You can sense their years of experience in dealing with insecure fashion models.

While Howard and Judy have never appeared in a catalog, Levenger readers have seen their grandson, Sean, whose image in a frame was a stowaway on a couple of Levenger covers.

When shown the cover and told it had gone to millions of homes in America, six-year old Sean said: “It’s me. It’s so cute.”

The current Levenger Vice President of Creative, Tim Barbini, praises Howard’s sense of lighting and composition as well as Judy’s resourcefulness when seeking the ideal prop. Moreover, adds Tim, “They’re both wonderful people.”

To which all of us at Levenger say: “Perfect.”

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Bernie Margolis and the Ladies of the Library

Bernie Margolis is not merely the President of the Boston Public Library, he’s its champion and protector.

So when he lobbied to change the name of the Copley subway stop to the Copley/Boston Public Library stop, it came as no surprise to his friends.

“I want the library’s name on every subway map in town,” Bernie told me. “I want recognition for the library.”

Too bad the Ladies of the Library can’t lobby for him.

“Art” and “Science” are their names, and they are the two magnificent bronzes that have graced the Copley Square entrance to the library since Bostonian Bela Pratt sculpted them in the early 1900s.

But Bernie had other plans for the Ladies. He wanted the best possible bookend models of these majestic creatures. And Levenger was going to make them.

I knew it would be a challenge—we would be making the first ever models of these Boston landmarks. I knew this from doing the Boston Public Library Delivery Bag a few years ago.

After Bernie and I visited the first candidate sculptor in his studio and inspected his work, we moved on to a second candidate, and finally to a team that worked from many photographs and careful dimensions.

At last I flew to Boston so Bernie could compare what were supposed to be the final prototype bronze bookends beside the originals. Bernie held the models aloft, closing one eye and sighting them in to the originals, unperturbed by the stares of Bostonians passing by. Art’s gown wasn’t quite flowing enough. Science’s neck wasn’t as graceful as the original. And let’s fix the toes a bit. And so on.

I dutifully took notes and photos to try to convey his observations to our team. Then I packed the sadly imperfect bookends back in my bag.

As we walked to Bernie’s car, I asked if he decorated the Ladies at the holidays as they do with wreaths on the lions at the New York Public Library.

“No, but they get decorated in a Boston kind of way. People put witches’ hats on them at Halloween and, if the Red Sox are playing a big game, they’ll wear Sox caps.”

“Do you take the hats off them later?” I asked.

“We leave them. They disappear on their own.”  Then we disappeared, too, into heavy downtown traffic, and headed to an Italian restaurant in the North End.

P.S. A few months later our models did finally meet Bernie’s approval, and we are proud to offer them to Bostonians and booklovers everywhere.

Here they are.

And here’s some more on their history.

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Bernie’s Bag and the Boston Public Library

Bernie Margolis would need only the red outfit to make a convincing Santa Claus. It’s not just his white hair and lively eyes. It’s the glee liable to break out at any moment—the joy that Bernie exudes about his workshop. Bernie’s workshop doesn’t make toys. Bernie’s workshop, which at the slightest prompting he will describe with a proprietor’s pride, is the Boston Public Library.

“Did you know the BPL is America’s only public library that is also a presidential library?” Bernie asked me on one of my first visits. “It’s John Adams’s Presidential Library. David McCullough researched his John Adams here, and later became a trustee. And let me show you the Abbey Room, which is truly amazing…”

It was on my first tour with Bernie that we came upon a pile of canvas bags down in the basement. I picked one up by its handles and saw that it was unusually deep, stenciled with “Boston Public Library,” and considerably worn.

“We’ve been using these bags for the past hundred years or so,” Bernie said. “The reason they’re so deep is so the delivery man can carry the most number of books relatively comfortably as he shuttles them between our branch libraries—from the truck, up and down stairs, that sort of thing.” Bernie picked up one bag in each hand. “It’s best if you carry two at a time to balance yourself,” he advised.

I knew we had to have them. Or rather, our customers did. They’d use this bag for any number of things, and they’d probably appreciate the history.

Little did I know what I was getting Levenger into  when I convinced Bernie to let us reproduce the delivery bag. The project taught me what a stickler the affable Bernie Margolis can be.

Considering ourselves to be experts in bags, we sent the design specs to our top canvas-bag manufacturer. We were quite pleased with the first samples, tested them out loaded to the max with books, and sent the bags with high expectations to Bernie. A week later we heard from Bernie’s office.

The bottom needed to be doubled.

“No it doesn’t,” countered our bag designer, who considered herself the expert in such matters. “It’s plenty strong enough with the gauge of canvas and heavy-duty thread.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” I answered, trying to smooth her.  “But Bernie wants it doubled bottomed. It can’t hurt, can it?”

“Well, no,” she agreed, holding the bag aloft and patting its bottom like a mother might pat her baby’s bottom. “It will just add some cost.”

The next round of samples with double layers of canvas did meet Bernie’s approval. Today, I’m proud to say, the delivery staff of the BPL uses these same bags on its daily rounds.

Stenciled inside the bag is the quotation etched in stone above the
Boylston Street entrance of the BPL:

The Commonwealth Requires the Education of the People as the Safeguard of Order and Liberty.

I’m proud to report that Levenger has paid the Library more than $25,000 in royalties for the bags as of the fall of 2007, showing that commerce and charitable giving can travel together. Plus, it brings out that sparkle in Bernie’s eyes.

And so with the bag as our first project, we felt prepared for something bigger. To be more specific, two big bronze ladies who have presided in front of the library since 1914. More on this in a future report…

Levenger goes off to college

To all of our customers who visited our headquarters store over the years, I am grateful to you. But this fall, our 20th anniversary, we’ve closed the headquarters store, converting its space over to conference rooms, while opening a store in the nearby shopping mall, Town Center at Boca Raton. I have to admit, the move feels a lot like sending our first-born off to college (which we did last fall), namely, bittersweet.

Ever since we moved to Delray Beach from Boston 18 years ago, we’ve had a store in our headquarters. It was tiny at first. A half-height wall separated “the store” from the desks of our few employees. If a customer actually came in, one of us not on the phone with another customer would get up and try to help. Often we formed rewarding relationships engendered by face-to-face discussions about how customers worked and how Levenger tools might help.

When we built our own warehouse and headquarters building in 1994, the store got big and even looked like a store with counters, cash registers, and full-time salespeople. The store doubled in size a few years later when we doubled our headquarters.

It housed both a first-quality “regular” store, as well as an outlet for our returns. One of the popular attractions of the outlet was the “pre-monogrammed” leather goods, which were priced shockingly low, and where many a customer came in regularly to search for his or her initials.

We grew to a point, however, where we needed to move beyond our headquarters. In order to ship faster and cheaper, we moved our warehouse to Memphis. (Head north and west, of Delray and stop after about a thousand miles.). We also moved our customer service and our computers there to be out of the path of the frequent hurricanes besetting Florida.

Moving our store out of headquarters, likewise, allows us to serve South Florida shoppers better—by being in a popular mall where it’s convenient to shop, rather than in an office park.

I’m proud to see Levenger in prime retail space. But a bit sad, too.

Gone are the messages that such-and-such customer from California or Venezuela is here and wants to say hello. Gone are the days when we could just run down the hall to the store to check on a product or buy a gift. Now, just as our customers do, we drive to the mall.

It’s all part of growing up, I guess, with its attendant advantages and disadvantages. Our son, I’m happy to report, is doing well at college, having made numerous new friends.

And it’s my hope that no matter how spread out Levenger becomes, no matter how many stores we open, that new friendships will flourish between Levenger staff members and the wonderful people who become Levenger customers.

Relationships are what will always be what’s at heart. That’s a lesson they should teach in college.

"And then a light went off…"

When people ask how Levenger began, I tell them that getting fired from my job helped quite a bit.

Not that I was fired for anything bad, really. I just made a bargain with my boss, the president of the software company for which I was supposed to develop new business. In a manner that must have come across as cocky, I told my boss, “Either the project I’m working on gets approved by the board, or I should move on.”

I was rather disappointed with my career at that point. At 33, I had spent a lot of time in higher education and had tried out a few different careers without much success. I saw people above me on the corporate ladder who didn’t seem to have much more on the ball than I did, and I felt stuck on the middle rungs. So I wanted to make some bold moves at this company and move up.

When the board shot down my idea, I was hoping my president would have forgotten my brash bargain. He didn’t.

The president was a nice enough guy with a Harvard MBA. He called me into his office to say it was time for me to go, and said he felt bad about it, since he knew my wife was expecting our first child, but business was business.

I suspect he also perceived—correctly—that I was one of those guys determined to be an entrepreneur, so he might as well get me started with a friendly goodbye, a few months’ severance, and a push overboard. In retrospect, getting tossed out of the salary ship was the cold shock I needed.

Soon after, Lori began her maternity leave from a successful career at IBM, and a couple of high-tech refugees launched their startup lifeboat into the turbulent seas of late 1980s America.

Where did the name Levenger come from? We combined Leveen and Granger. It sounded good enough and was shorter than two names.

When shopping for lighting for our first home (while still employed), we became frustrated with the offerings at stores but intrigued with the new halogen lights. The bright, white light seemed like a new generation of computer chips to us. And just as new microchips allowed computers to do new things, we understood new halogen bulbs would allow lighting fixtures to do new things.

After visiting the wholesale lighting shows, we put together a collection of some of the designs we liked best, and put together a tiny catalog—really just one large sheet folded twice—and advertised it with a one-inch ad in The New Yorker.

Those blessed readers of The New Yorker called to ask, “Do you really know about reading lights? Because it’s very important to us…” Actually, we knew nothing about reading lights. We did know enough, however, to listen to what potential customers wanted, so we visited lighting engineers, bulb manufacturers, and vision experts, and quickly became experts of a sort. At least we had more expertise than the salesperson you might find at your local lighting store. And so, our tiny business began to make sales.

We thought the key market would be for lights next to personal computers, which were then flooding into homes, but the demand was actually for a far older pursuit—reading in bed.

That was the first of many surprises that would come over the next 20 years, not the least of which is that we’re still around, and, with the help of capable staff members and now millions of beloved customers, Levenger is thriving.

So our heartfelt birthday thanks to you, dear customers. It’s been a rewarding adventure we hope continues for many years to come.

Find more on this subject at Levenger.com 

Welcome to my world

I’m Steve Leveen, the CEO and co-founder of Levenger. Welcome to my blog.

I’ll cover what goes on at Levenger behind the scenes, especially the stories behind some of our products that you may find interesting and perhaps useful.

I’ll also relay stories about how successful people work and how people use books to fuel change in their lives and in the world.

What it’s like being CEO of Levenger

When I meet customers, the comments I hear most often are “I love your stuff” and “You must be proud of the company you’ve built.”

I’m gratified when people say they like Levenger products. But hearing that I must feel proud always leaves me at loss for how to respond.

The truth is, I don’t spend two seconds feeling proud.

Being in retail means facing a never-ending list of things to improve: the zipper pulls on this bag need to be strengthened; the packaging of this ream of paper isn’t protecting the paper well enough. Are we answering the phones quickly enough? Are sales associates trained in the latest fiber-tip refills for our rollerball pens? Are we responding to emails fast enough with helpful responses? On and on and on…

Feeling pride is a luxury we can’t afford. Gordon Segal, the founder of Crate & Barrel and one of our mentors, says good retailers have to stay nervous. We do.

What I do feel is gratitude. I’m grateful that I can spend my time helping to design good gear for people who read, write and work with ideas. We try to make useful products that are also beautiful and built to last. What a privilege it is to be able to create such things for discriminating people who care passionately about their pursuits.

I feel grateful to work with the staff at Levenger, starting with my wife, Lori, who founded Levenger with me and continues to surprise me with her creativity and passion for excellence.

Ed Howell, our president, is a passionate merchant himself and a superb leader. Ed and the rest of the Levenger staff are dedicated to building a long-lasting company that is cherished by those we serve.

Finally, I feel grateful to our customers. I realize that many CEOs say this, and that it can seem trite, so let me try to convey the deep respect and admiration I truly hold.

Over the years I’ve been able to talk and correspond with thousands of Levenger customers. They come from all walks of life and every profession. They are interested people. If there is a common denominator, it is their drive to learn in order to better themselves and to improve this world. They are leading organizations, conducting painstaking science, designing better buildings, teaching history, acting, composing, writing, governing.

When I speak to new Levenger employees I tell them that the best perk of working here is interacting with Levenger customers. I tell them that at Levenger we may not be saving the world, but our customers are.

I’m grateful to serve you and hope that this blog will become another way to do so.

Steve