Grandson carries forward the history of Shaw-Barton and advertising art

COSHOCTON − The golden age of Coshocton County as the birthplace of advertising art was recently celebrated with an exhibit at the Johnson-Humrickhouse Museum featuring pieces from private collectors ranging from the 1890s to the 1950s.

However, the legacy of novelty advertising extended past this period and included more than the founders of the field, Jasper Meek and Henry Beach. Shaw-Barton was founded in 1940 by Jay S. Shaw. He led a group of investors to purchase the calendar and specialty advertising division of American Art Works.

Jeff Shaw of Columbus is the grandson of Jay and worked at Shaw Barton starting in 1976, eventually becoming vice president of sales. Jeff and his brother, Dave, left the firm in 1990 and started their own promotional products and distributorship in Columbus. This was after Shaw-Barton had been purchased by Jordan Industries Inc., or JII, in 1988.

"I always felt I wanted to get into this business. I grew up in it, obviously," Jeff said.

Jay worked for Brown and Bigelow, a major promotional products and calendar firm, and resigned as executive vice president of sales after a disagreement with upper management. Six others who worked for the company left shortly after and they all wanted to stay in the field. Jay took the last initials of the men to create the name Barton.

They started out making calendars, leather goods, playing cards, pens and pencils and printed on glassware. As time went on, several of the products were outsourced and the Coshocton factory focused primarily on calendars.

"They had incentives for customers to buy early in the year, early renewals at discounted prices and their invoices wouldn't become due until December. So, they would buy a year in advance and we would produce that and keep employees employed (at Shaw Barton) throughout the year and then warehouse that and ship those calendars to customers later in the fall," Jeff recalled on keeping work going all year along.

Jeff said they also acquired a school yearbook company, School Annual, that helped to balance printing and production.

The company peaked in employees in the 1970s to 1980s with more than 300 in Coshocton and almost another 300 salesmen across the country. The yearbook division was sold off to Jostens in 2003 and the plant closed in 2004 after JII was acquired by the Lee Wayne Corporation.

Organic Technologies, what is now Wiley Companies, acquired the former Shaw-Barton/JII factory at 545 Walnut St. in 2008. They still use it as an office, laboratory and warehouse facility.

Jeff is now the national sales director for proprietary lines of HALO Branded Solutions, a major promotional products distributor. He still works with several salesmen and others who started at Shaw-Barton and with customers who still remember the company. Some of the Shaw-Barton calendar types are still in print today.

"I have so many great memories of the employees there in Coshocton. Not just employees, but associates and friends. Some truly deep friendships were developed and remain. It generates a great number of memories," Jeff said.

Leonard Hayhurst is a community content coordinator and general news reporter for the Coshocton Tribune with more than 15 years of local journalism experience and multiple awards from the Ohio Associated Press. He can be reached at 740-295-3417 or llhayhur@coshoctontribune.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @llhayhurst.

This article originally appeared on Coshocton Tribune: Shaw-Barton is a part of Coshocton's novelty advertising history