Photo by Yaritza Colon

Erica is a bench-trained and self-taught bookbinder with a background in the book arts and a BFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. By day she is a book repair and conservation technician in the Bindery at the Rockefeller Library of Brown University. She performs a wide range of treatments on circulating collections; from simple Japanese tissue repairs to complete disbinding and re-casing.  Erica also creates custom enclosures for rare books and trains student workers to make wrappers for items being sent to off-site storage.

At night she sews in a little studio room of the little house which she shares with her husband, Tom Zannini, a vegan barber, along with their cat and dog, Catso and Lucy, in addition to two foster animals, Othercat and Ratchet. For several years Tom helped Erica to run Sugarush, the cupcake truck, which specialized in vegan cupcakes and locally roasted coffee, and together they launched Championship Melt, a wrestling-themed grilled cheese truck. Sugarush has since retired, but Champ Melt lives on under its new owner, Drew of Beyond Wrestling.

Erica sews on an avocado green 1950's Singer and a 1960’s Necchi Lydia, makes her frosting in a tangerine orange Kitchenaid mixer and swears she'll get around to selling the cupcake truck, a 1953 International Harvester Metro Van, one of these days... Erica collects manual typewriters, 1950's dishes, 1970's board games, and books. Tom collects antique barber straight razors, t-shirts and books, and is forever trying to bring home stray and/or wild animals.  Not surprisingly, they have become the repository of their families' antiques, photographs, and furniture.