Francis Glidden, partners and Jap-a-lac.

Glidden began in Cleveland, Ohio, as a varnish business. The company dates itself to 1875, and both of the main histories name Francis Harrington Glidden as its founder, though they tell the early years differently. English Wikipedia says he started the business in 1875 with Levi Brackett and Thomas Bolles, making varnishes for furniture, pianos, carriages and wagons; that it was first called Glidden, Brackett & Company, then the Glidden & Joy Company; and that it was incorporated in 1890 as The Glidden Varnish Company.

The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, published by Case Western Reserve University, gives a different order. It says the business began as the Glidden Varnish Co., became Glidden & Brackett when Levi C. Brackett joined, and in 1875 bought the newly organised Forest City Paint & Varnish Co., taking the name Glidden & Joy Varnish Co. Both sources agree on Cleveland, on Glidden and Brackett, and on varnish. The encyclopedia says the firm became known for a lacquer called Jap-a-lac.

The modern company took shape under Adrian D. Joyce. The encyclopedia says Joyce bought the firm in 1917 and renamed it the Glidden Co.; Wikipedia says he became president when it was incorporated that year and held the post until 1950, when his son, Dwight P. Joyce, succeeded him. Joyce quickly bought other paint makers and distributors, adding pigments, dry colours, chemicals and metals to the business, the encyclopedia says.

Under Joyce, Glidden also went into food. Wikipedia dates The Glidden Food Products Co. to 1920; the encyclopedia says the company bought vegetable-oil processors and food makers in the 1920s and by 1934 owned the E.R. Durkee Co., a maker of condiments, spices and sauces. In the 1930s Glidden employed the chemist Percy Julian, Wikipedia records.

Latex, Spred Satin and SCM.

For much of the twentieth century Glidden was a Cleveland company. The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History says it kept its headquarters and much of its paint and varnish manufacturing in the city, along with research for its paint and resins division, while food research for its Durkee Famous Foods line was in Chicago. Its research centre, first in Lakewood and from 1966 in Strongsville, both in the Cleveland area, developed interior latex paint in 1948, exterior latex in 1957 and an insulating paint in 1978, the encyclopedia says.

The encyclopedia names two consumer paint brands from that period, Glidden and Spred Satin, sold through company-owned outlets and independent dealers, alongside a line of industrial coatings. That two-channel model — the company’s own stores plus outside retailers — is still how Glidden describes its distribution today.

Then came a run of corporate owners. In 1967, Wikipedia says, Glidden merged with SCM Corporation, the office-machine maker, and became its Glidden-Durkee Division; the encyclopedia puts the merger in the mid-1960s. The encyclopedia says the division’s ageing Cleveland paint plant was phased out in 1976, although the coatings and foods headquarters stayed in the city.

In 1986 SCM was itself acquired by the British group Hanson Trust. Hanson kept the Durkee food business and sold Glidden’s coatings and resins division to Imperial Chemical Industries, ICI, of Britain, both sources say. Glidden remained part of ICI’s paint business until 2008. In 2008 ICI was bought by the Dutch group AkzoNobel, which took Glidden with it.

Paint, colour and ownership.

The paint brands in this group sit at very different points in the trade. Some are long-established manufacturers whose names have passed through several owners, and whose cans are sold through hardware chains, dedicated stores and trade counters; others are younger companies that sell mainly online or from a handful of showrooms, often built around a short, edited list of colours rather than a vast library.

A paint brand’s identity is carried by more than a logo. It lives in the can and its label, in the fan deck and the swatch card, in the names given to colours, in the store or website where people choose them, and in programmes that pick out a colour for the year. Because the company behind a name may have been sold, merged or closed, and because paint can be made far from where it is marketed, the plain questions are worth asking: who started it, who owns it now, and where the paint is actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself, and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

From PPG to Pittsburgh Paints.

AkzoNobel kept Glidden for only a few years. In December 2012 it agreed to sell its North American decorative paints business, including Glidden, to PPG Industries of Pittsburgh, and the sale was completed on 1 April 2013. That day PPG said its portfolio had been “significantly strengthened with the addition of well-known brands such as Glidden, Flood, CIL, Sico and Liquid Nails.”

PPG did not keep the business either. On 17 October 2024, English Wikipedia records, PPG announced its intention to sell its architectural coatings business in the United States and Canada. On 2 December 2024, American Industrial Partners announced that it had completed the purchase and renamed the business The Pittsburgh Paints Company, in a release datelined Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania; it named Jaime Irick as chief executive. The Pittsburgh Paints Company has owned Glidden since December 2024, alongside brands Wikipedia lists as including Flood, Liquid Nails, Sico and Pittsburgh Paints and Stains.

Glidden’s website now describes the brand as “founded in 1875” and as part of the Pittsburgh Paints Company’s family of brands. It says Glidden is sold in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico through company-owned stores, The Home Depot, Walmart and other dealers. The site offers colour swatches, a colour visualiser and a page of 2026 colour trends, and sets the name in capitals, GLIDDEN.

The blue and gold palette here is our own interpretation — a nod to the varnish trade the business began in.

For a design guide, Glidden shows how a brand name can outlast a long run of owners. Compare Benjamin Moore, another American paint brand under a corporate owner, and Sherwin-Williams, also founded in Cleveland. For this guide we use a deep blue, a pale wash and a varnish gold with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Glidden’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.