Ault & Wiborg Company

The Ault & Wiborg Company was a manufacturer of printing inks that operated independently from 1878 to 1928. Founded in Cincinnati, Ohio, by Levi Addison Ault and Frank Bestow Wiborg, it expanded until its operations in multiple cities made it the world's largest ink manufacturer of its day.[1]

Ault & Wiborg Company
Typemanufacturer
Founded1878 (1878) in Cincinnati, United States
FoundersLevi Addison Ault, Frank Bestow Wiborg
Defunct1928 (1928)
FateMerger
SuccessorInternational Printing Ink Corp.
Productsprinting inks

The firm prospered with the development of colored inks based on coal-dye tars and the introduction of lithography.[1]

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. Among the artists who produced works for the company were Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (in 1896;[2][3] he was also a customer, using the company's inks for his own works[4]), Will H. Bradley (the "dean of American designers", he produced several dozen of the posters from 1895[5] to about 1900); and Louis Rhead (at least one, in 1896[6]). Many of these designs have been collected by noted institutions, including the National Museum of American History,[7] Library of Congress,[8] the Metropolitan Museum of Art,[9] and more. In 1902, the company published a book reproducing some 100 of these posters.[10]

Ault was still running Ault & Wiborg in 1928 when he sold his interest for $14 million ($238,600,000 today[11]),[1] allowing it to be merged with Queen City Printing Inks and Philip Ruxton Co. to form the International Printing Ink Corp.[12] The company was renamed Interchemical Corp. in 1938.[12] It was sold in 1968 to the Carrier Corporation and then in 1985 to BASF.[13]

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Notes
  1. "13 Sep 1999, 20 - The Cincinnati Post at Newspapers.com". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2022-09-26.
  2. "Poster for The Ault & Wiborg Co". MFABoston. Retrieved October 4, 2022.
  3. Springer, Annemarie (1973). "Some Images of Women in French Posters of the 1890s". Art Journal. 33 (2): 116–124. doi:10.2307/775762. ISSN 0004-3249.
  4. price, kathryn (2007). "The "Juice of a Few Flowers": Gerald and Sara Murphy's Life of Beautiful Things". Gastronomica. 7 (2): 13–16. doi:10.1525/gfc.2007.7.2.13. ISSN 1529-3262.
  5. "Ault & Wiborg – Will H. Bradley, an American Artist: Selections from the Gordon A. Pfeiffer Collection". Retrieved 2022-09-26.
  6. Rhead, Louis (1896). "William Caxton made his own ink, but you can have yours made by The Ault & Wiborg Co". www.loc.gov. Retrieved 2022-10-04.
  7. "Ault & Wiborg Co". National Museum of American History. Retrieved 2022-09-26.
  8. "Search results for Ault, Available Online". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 2022-09-26.
  9. "Advertisement: Ault & Wiborg Company, Manufacturers of Lithographic & Letter Press Printing Inks, Cincinnati, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, London". www.metmuseum.org. Retrieved 2022-09-26.
  10. Poster Album. Cincinnati: Ault & Wiborg Company. 1902. Retrieved September 26, 2022.
  11. 1634–1699: McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1700–1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800–present: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. "Consumer Price Index (estimate) 1800–". Retrieved May 28, 2023.
  12. "26 Jun 1988, Page 40 - The Cincinnati Enquirer at Newspapers.com". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2022-09-26.
  13. "20 Jul 1990, 9 - The Cincinnati Post at Newspapers.com". Newspapers.com. Retrieved 2022-09-26.
  14. Boston Public Library (2013-09-03), The Ault & Wiborg Company, retrieved 2022-09-26
  15. "Poster album". digital.cincinnatilibrary.org. Retrieved 2022-09-26.
  16. "The Ault & Wiborg Company, makers of lithographic & letter press , printing inks. Cincinnati, Ohio, USA". collections.carli.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2022-09-26.
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