Reveling in Color

JKSchiller — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:15:28 +0000

Unsigned
Ault & Wiborg Printing Inks, c. 1900
Advertising illustration for The Ault & Wiborg Co.

In 1878 the Ault & Wiborg Company was established in Cincinnati, Ohio specializing in manufacturing printing inks, dry color dyes, and pigments. In the mid-19th century English and German chemists began experimenting with creating colorants derived from coal-tar chemicals. So successful was this company in the use of coal-tar dyes to produce bright colored inks that beginning in the 1890s they began to place full page color ads in the print trade magazine, The Inland Printer and in other trade periodicals like The Engraver and Printer, and The American Printer. Not only were these ads typically designed by leading illustrators, the impressive images were made to showcase the firm’s range of colored inks. By the turn of the 20th century Ault & Wiborg was one of the world’s largest ink suppliers with offices also in New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Buffalo, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Toronto, Havana, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, London, and Yokohama.*

I have always been partial to the wonderful pattern of the above illustration’s composition. Look closely and you will see that it is composed of the repetitive forms of a gold-colored fountain pen nib, alternately arranged pointing up and down. Each nib is surrounded by the rich blues and reds of Ault & Wiborg inks.

Many of Ault & Wiborg’s ads were the work of illustrator Will Bradley and were American examples of the art nouveau style influenced by the work of English illustrator Aubrey Beardsley’s sinuous style. One of my favorite aspects of these advertisements is the inclusion of the notation of the ink colors used in the illustration at the bottom of the page for many of these pieces. In keeping with the product being advertised, Will Bradley created color-rich illustrations in a limited palette, as seen below. This ad was produced in a variety of color combinations: brown and olive; deep olive green and brilliant scarlet lake; and bronze brown and green lake. Notice how each color combination causes the image to read just a bit differently between the foreground and the background the same way the contrasting color used for the capitol letters in the text panel pop or recede the rest of the colored text.

Will Bradley (1869-1931)
Ault & Wiborg Printing Inks, c. 1895
Advertising illustration and popular poster for the Ault & Wiborg Company

Eventually Ault & Wiborg commissioned Oscar Binner of Binner Engraving in Chicago to design a series of ads called the History of Art and Illustration series focused on the history of illumination. Still meant to showcase the company’s inks and to be instructive, these sumptuous ads reflect the style and taste of different places and periods in the history of decorative arts. The written history notations were included in the lower margin to the left and pendant to the listing of ink colors used to the right.

Binner Engraving Co., Chicago
Ault & Wiborg ads, 1899 (fr. left to right: Celtic 7th c. The Book of Kells of Irish and Anglo-Saxon illumination; Roman 8th c., vol. by Sylvester, Paleography of All Nations; Japanese 6th c. manuscript style)

So popular were all these advertising illustrations that overwhelmed with requests for copies, in 1902 Ault & Wiborg published them in a Poster Album book.

February 9, 2012

By Joyce K. Schiller, Curator, Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies, at the Norman Rockwell Museum

For a wonderful overview of the company and their colorful ads see the two postings on Codex99, http://www.codex99.com/design/68.html and http://www.codex99.com/design/67.html

Otherwise for more information on Ault & Wiborg see, http://www.colorantshistory.org/AultWiborg.html

“The Street That Knows No Night”

JKSchiller — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:28:54 +0000

Louis Biedermann (1874-1957)

The New Broadway—The Street That Knows No Night

[Looking Down Broadway and Seventh Avenue from Long Acre Square—Forty-fourth Street]

Cover illustration for The World Sunday Magazine (November 5, 1899)

In the 19^th century, Longacre Square (aka, Long Acre) in New York City was the center of the community’s carriage-making trade and was named for a similar district in London.[i] Located at the intersection of 42^nd Street, Seventh Avenue, and Broadway [Bloomingdale Road] up through 47^th Street, this nexus of streets opened the way to the north of Manhattan. By the early 1890s this once rural area of the city had become the location of Oscar Hammerstein’s Olympia theater, leading the way to a new identity for the neighborhood as the city’s locus of theaters, restaurants, and blazing electric lights and lighted signage. It was renamed Times Square on April 8, 1904, the name having been suggested by the owner and publisher of the New York Times after the New York Times tower built there.

Photo of New York circa 1904. “Longacre Square”soon to be renamed Times Square after the recently completed New York Times tower seen here.

8×10 inch dry plate glass negative, Detroit Publishing Company.

Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World was one of the most widely read newspapers of its day. The Sunday edition, which could sell as many as half a million or more copies around the United States, was filled with colorful artwork, cartoons, and cultural commentary. At the turn of the twentieth century, one of the World’s most popular illustrators, Louis Biedermann (1874-1957), speculated on the future New York in 1999 in a lavish two-page spread that pictured Manhattan solidly packed with skyscrapers, including behemoth towers at least a hundred-stories tall, sporting landing platforms of airships. Seen above, Biedermann’s illustration shows the sparkle of light from specific signs, the wash of light reflected in the damp street that was cast by large-scale signage, and the glowing light-filled sky. Notice how he projects the absence of horse-drawn vehicles in the city of the future.

Light has defined this public space since its incarnation as Times Square, even to the dropping of the ball of electric lights to mark the new year beginning in
1907. It was the same New York Times owner and publisher, Adolph Ochs, who came up with the idea of dropping the ball of light. The Times did not remain located on the square for long. By 1913 they had moved to another building on West 43^rd Street.

Time takes no toll from him who takes White Rock, 1912

White Rock ad with tag line, The Great White Way at Times Square

At the corner of 47^th Street and Broadway the White Rock electric sign display was famous not only in reality but it was also used for print advertising with an illustrator designed view of the square over-shadowed by the sign. The display included fountains of colorful lights set at either side of the ad’s huge brightly lit clock. Notice how in the print ad a light shines on the sign from an airplane flying over the square. That yellow beam of light makes the focus of the ad more obvious.

Howard Chandler Christy (1873-1952)

Woman looking over Times Square from building ledge, c. 1920s

Illustration believed to have been created for a poster

Oil on canvas

Courtesy Illustration House, New York

As seen in the illustration by Louis Biedermann, it only took twenty years from Thomas Edison’s invention of the incandescent lamp in 1879 for Time’s Square to be framed with and focused on the light illuminating and defining it. In another twenty years, the bright light’s of Broadway would help to identify other illustrations such as Howard Chandler Christy’s Woman looking over the Square from her perch on a tall building’s ledge and reminding us, ‘all that glitters is not gold.’[ii]

[i] In London the carriage building community was on Long Acre Street. In Manhattan, the first version of the district was called “New York’s Long Acre.” See “The Naming of Long Acre Square” New York Times (March 8, 1903).

[ii] Shakespeare wrote an early version of this line in his play, The Merchant of Venice: ‘all that glisters is not gold.’

January 26, 2012

By Joyce K. Schiller, Curator, Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies, Norman Rockwell Museum

The Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies

Reveling in Color

“The Street That Knows No Night”