The Ault & Wiborg Company was a manufacturer of

printing Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The ea ...

ink Ink is a gel, sol, or solution that contains at least one colorant, such as a dye or pigment, and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing or writing with a pen, brush, reed pen, or quill. Thi ...

s that operated independently from 1878 to 1928. Founded in

Cincinnati, Ohio Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

, by Levi Addison Ault and

Frank Bestow Wiborg Frank Bestow Wiborg (April 30, 1855 – May 12, 1930) was a businessman from Cincinnati who, with Levi Addison Ault, created the ink manufacturer Ault & Wiborg Company. Early life He was born on April 30, 1855 in Cleveland, Ohio. He was a son ...

, it expanded until its operations in multiple cities made it the world's largest ink manufacturer of its day. The firm prospered with the development of colored inks based on coal-dye tars and the introduction of

lithography Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...

. As part of its marketing efforts, the company commissioned elaborate posters and magazine advertisements, the latter particularly for ''The Printing Art'' and ''

The Inland Printer ''The Inland Printer'' was an American trade magazine about printing and graphic design. It was founded in 1883 and, after several name changes, stopped publishing in 2011. ''The Inland Printer'' was first published in Chicago, Illinois, in 188 ...

''. Among the artists who produced works for the company were

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Comte Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901) was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, caricaturist and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the ...

(in 1896; he was also a customer, using the company's inks for his own works),

Will H. Bradley William Henry Bradley (July 10, 1868 – January 25, 1962) was an American Art Nouveau illustrator and artist. Nicknamed the "Dean of American Designers" by ''The Saturday Evening Post'', he was the highest-paid American artist of the early 2 ...

(the "dean of American designers", he produced several dozen of the posters from 1895 to about 1900); and

Louis Rhead Louis John Rhead (November 6, 1857 – July 29, 1926) was an English-born American artist, illustrator, author and angler who was born in Etruria, Staffordshire, England. He emigrated to the United States at the age of twenty-four. Early life Th ...

(at least one, in 1896). Many of these designs have been collected by noted institutions, including the

National Museum of American History The National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center collects, preserves, and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific, and military history. Among the items on display is t ...

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is the research library that officially serves the United States Congress and is the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It is the oldest federal cultural institution in the country. The library is ...

, the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

, and more. In 1902, the company published a book reproducing some 100 of these posters. Ault was still running Ault & Wiborg in 1928 when he sold his interest for $14 million ($ today), allowing it to be merged with Queen City Printing Inks and Philip Ruxton Co. to form the International Printing Ink Corp. The company was renamed Interchemical Corp. in 1938. It was sold in 1968 to the

Carrier Corporation Carrier Global Corporation is an American multinational heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC), refrigeration, and fire and security equipment corporation based in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. Carrier was founded in 1915 as an independ ...

and then in 1985 to

BASF BASF Societas Europaea, SE () is a German multinational corporation, multinational chemical company and the List of largest chemical producers, largest chemical producer in the world. Its headquarters is located in Ludwigshafen, Germany. The ...

External links

Poster Book
a 1902 book reproducing some 100 Ault & Wiborg posters * Noted institutions that hold Ault & Wiborg posters in their collections include:

University of Delaware The University of Delaware (colloquially UD or Delaware) is a public land-grant research university located in Newark, Delaware. UD is the largest university in Delaware. It offers three associate's programs, 148 bachelor's programs, 121 mas ...

Boston Public Library The Boston Public Library is a municipal public library system in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, founded in 1848. The Boston Public Library is also the Library for the Commonwealth (formerly ''library of last recourse'') of the Commonweal ...

, Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library,

Chicago History Museum Chicago History Museum is the museum of the Chicago Historical Society (CHS). The CHS was founded in 1856 to study and interpret Chicago's history. The museum has been located in Lincoln Park since the 1930s at 1601 North Clark Street at the in ...

, and others.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ault and Wiborg Company Defunct manufacturing companies based in Ohio