Ohio Art: Metal Lithography Experts

People like me think of a couple things when we hear the company name Ohio Art. The company has been making toys for years, but their most prominent creations were drawing toys: the Etch-a-Sketch and the Magna-Doodle. Their lines of innovative toys have entertained kids for years, but the toys were actually secondary to Ohio Art’s original — and still very prominent — industry. In 1912, the plaster-frame-manufacturer turned to pressed- and shaped-metal production to create wood-grained steel picture frames. To create the wood-like finish, Ohio Art bought and started using metal lithography equipment. Enamel lithography is still common today: if you’ve purchased something in a decorated tin, the surface with printed with lithography. The process uses a baked enamel finish that adheres to the metal and creates a smooth, strong, shiny surface. Although it accounts for less than half their business now, Ohio Art’s Martin Killgallon says that a large amount of products packaged in tins in the United States today are printed by Ohio Art.

Ohio Art was generally quite good in applying their logo to the products they sold, although the logo varied significantly over the years, and in many cases the color and style was driven more by the colors and shape of the toy than any uniformity of logo. This website has an excellent reference, but primarily taken from metal tops produced by Ohio Art. More often than not, however, if a metal litho toy is without an Ohio Art logo, odds are it’s probably not from Ohio Art.

Ohio Art’s logo contained a globe, so it was only fitting that one of the more common printed-metal objects they produced was a globe-shaped bank. I know I’ve seen these quite often at antique shows and shops, but I was a bit surprised to find that Ohio Art re-used the same molds for various purposes, such as these ‘alternative’ globes with different, un-globe-like, surface paint:

Ohio Art produced mostly inanimate objects, like the globes above, but also a myriad of sand pails, various tea-sets and play dishes, and decorative items. They did, however, also produce some wind-up and active toys. The tin lawn-mower to the right has to be one of the neatest metal toys I’ve seen in a while. For most of their history, Ohio Art also produced metal tops, many of which (like the globes) shared the same bodies and molds but had different images printed around the upper surface. While the more complex toys had wound-spring movements and numerous moving parts, by comparison the toys were simpler than the other toys on the market, depicting more common items than race cars or spaceships.

A boon for Ohio Art first came in 1933, when they acquired the license to print Walt Disney characters. From 1933 to 1942, and then again from 1944-1945, Ohio Art produced a variety of toys primarily showing Mickey Mouse and his compatriots enjoying themselves, from tin drums to toy pails to (again in the utilitarian motif) a Disneyania carpet sweeper!

While I admit I would never have associated Ohio Art with metal toys, I was pleasantly entertained that I recognized so many of the toys Ohio Art produced. Even though the toys may not have been as fancy or gimmicky as their competitors, the design and imagery of their litho metal toys was top notch, showing a degree of quality that proves exactly why they remain a top metal lithographer in the United States today.