It Started With a
Thrift Store Typewriter.
OUR STORY
And a teenage girl in Charleston who had absolutely no idea what she was starting.
In 1989, a kid named Ellie O'Brien walked into a thrift store on James Island and walked out with a beat-up typewriter. No plan. No business degree. No vision board. Just a typewriter, and a vague idea that she might type poems or something.
Thirty-five years later, that same spirit — curious, a little impulsive, deeply funny — is behind every single piece that ships out of West Ashley under the name All Things Cotton Paper. Over 27,000 orders. A perfect 5-star rating. A feature in the Charleston Mercury. And still, Ellie will be the first to tell you she barely considers herself an artist.
"A satiated businesswoman, maybe," she'll say. And then she'll make you laugh so hard you need to go home and take a nap.
Ellie O'Brien at her vintage Underwood typewriter — West Ashley, Charleston, SC
The Typewriter That Started Everything
After finding that first typewriter at the thrift store, Ellie eventually found herself on Etsy — a platform still young and full of opportunity. She searched for typewriter-based products and was surprised to find almost nothing. So she hopped on eBay, found the cheapest typewriter she could, and started typing.
I didn't really have a plan. I thought I'd type poems or something, but suddenly I got the idea for wedding vows.
So that's what she did. She typed up a few popular readings and posted them for sale. One week later, she had her first order. She was charging pennies, but she went straight out and spent a hundred dollars on fancy paper. (It turned out to be terrible for the typewriter. But she couldn't wait to type that first piece.)
Orders started trickling in. Then flowing. "I was making $150 a month and I was absolutely thrilled," she laughs. The businesswoman in her started turning gears.
The "Anniversaries!" Moment
The real breakthrough came when Ellie was mid-sentence, telling the story of her shop, and suddenly had a thought so obvious and so exciting that she blurted it out loud — startling the journalist interviewing her, and her wife Caroline, who had been quietly painting on a ladder nearby.
Anniversaries! You know, every anniversary is a different gift. When I found out the first anniversary is paper and the second is cotton, I thought — surely there's cotton paper. That's when things took off.
It was a perfect fit. She already had the typewriter. She already had the customers who loved the idea of something hand typed and personal. And now she had a product that practically sold itself — wedding vows and first dance lyrics, typed on 100% cotton handmade paper, framed beautifully, and shipped with love from Charleston.
The shop name came next: All Things Cotton Paper. The paper came from artisan women in India — handmade, 100% cotton, acid-free, with those gorgeous deckled edges. Thick and rich and made to last a lifetime. Or longer.
Meet Caroline
(The CFO, Apparently)
Proudly Local. Wildly Global.
The interview that became the Charleston Mercury feature took place while Ellie and her wife Caroline were painting their living room accent wall navy blue. Caroline handled the ladder. Ellie handled the storytelling. This, it turns out, is a pretty accurate division of labor.
"I'm the CFO here," Caroline announced at some point during the interview, from somewhere up on the ladder. Ellie did not dispute this.
Together they run the business from West Ashley — Ellie at the typewriter, Caroline keeping the books. It works beautifully.
Charleston runs through everything Ellie makes. She ships from here. She lives here. And locals love the idea of having something handmade by a neighbor.
I get a lot of local orders. People who live here just come on by and pick them up. But so many people love Charleston and have visited — they get excited about having a local person making something customized for them.
But the orders don't stop at the city limits. Customers come from across the country and around the world — all drawn to the same thing. The romance of a real typewriter. The beauty of cotton paper. The knowledge that a human being, in a house in West Ashley, typed their words by hand.
AS SEEN IN
The Romance of All Things Cotton Paper
In February 2022, the Charleston Mercury sat down with Ellie to tell the story behind the shop — the thrift store typewriter, the accidental anniversary gift empire, and why Charleston gets to claim her as its own local treasure. It's a good read
READ THE FULL ARTICLE IN THE CHARLESTON MERCURY
Still Typing. Still Thrilled.
The Underwood is over 100 years old. There is no delete button. Every piece has the beautiful imperfections of something made by human hands — the slight variations in pressure, the charm of a key struck just a little harder than the rest. That's not a bug. That's the whole point.
Ellie left a nine-to-five life behind to build this. She traded the predictable for the personal. And every time she slides a new piece of cotton paper into that old typewriter and starts typing someone's wedding vows, she's still just as excited as she was the day she got that first order.
She may be making meaningful moments for people all across the world. But Charleston gets to claim her as its own.