From commercial ink to the craft table.

Ranger began with banks. The company says that Ranger Industries was founded in 1929 and originally made an exclusive line of commercial ink products for the US banking industry. Its craft business came decades later, under a new owner.

In 1975, Ranger says, Vincent A. DiLascia bought the company, and it has been family owned and operated since then. Vince and his wife, Anne Generas, expanded the business by introducing new ink colours, which, the company says, opened the door to a new market: arts and crafts. In 1979, by its own account, Ranger developed art stamp pads in unusual, vibrant colours.

For the next two decades much of that work went out under other companies’ names. Ranger says that until 1998 its primary business was private-label products for stamp manufacturers, and that it then began marketing product lines of its own, starting with inks and moving on into other mediums. The running of the business passed within the family: the company says that Justin Russo and Alain Avrillon, Vince’s sons-in-law, started working at Ranger in 2001 and took over operations completely in 2006.

Made in New Jersey, signed by designers.

Ranger makes a point of where its products come from. The company says that through all its changes it has kept all of its inks, embossing powders, paints, mediums, dimensional glitters, glues and stamp cleaners manufactured in the United States, at a facility in Tinton Falls, New Jersey, and that this lets it get products to customers quickly as the craft market changes. That is the company’s own account of its manufacturing.

Its signature range carries a designer’s name. Ranger’s website describes Tim Holtz as the signature designer behind its Distress and Alcohol Ink brands, and Holtz’s own website lists Ranger, for Distress and Alcohol Ink, among the companies he has teamed up with to develop the Tim Holtz signature brand of products — alongside Sizzix for dies and embossing, Stampers Anonymous for stamps and stencils, and Advantus for his idea-ology range. Ranger describes the Distress range as inks, sprays, reinkers, tools and surfaces built for layered colour, distressed effects and mixed-media experimentation.

Holtz is one of several designers whose names sit on Ranger products. The company’s about page lists its signature designers as Tim Holtz, Dyan Reaveley, Dina Wakley, Simon Hurley and Janene Meyerowitz, and its range includes Dylusions by Dyan Reaveley and Dina Wakley MEdia. Ranger says its designers frequently go on the road to teach at retail and consumer events through the year.

The designers bring different styles to the range. Ranger describes Dyan Reaveley as a mixed-media artist known for layering colour, images and text, whose line of art-journaling supplies includes ink sprays, paints, paint pens, stamps, stencils and journals; Dina Wakley as a mixed-media artist and teacher whose expressive style is anchored by her use of white space, and whose MEdia range covers paints, surfaces, stamps and stencils, and who, it says, has been scrapbooking since 1995, stamping since 1996 and art journaling since 2004; and Janene Meyerowitz as the founder of the paper-craft brand 49 and Market, which she established in 2016. Simon Hurley, the company says, came to the craft through card making, and Ranger’s shop also sells etched dies under the names Simon Hurley create. and Spellbinders.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group all make tools and supplies for paper crafts: cutting machines, steel and etched dies, embossing folders, stamps, inks and adhesives. Paper-craft and die-cutting brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family businesses that began at a kitchen table or a trade-show booth to names that now belong to larger craft or office groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a specialist craft shop to a general-merchandise aisle.

A paper-craft brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single machine or die than by a name, a system of compatible parts and the projects it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its headquarters or its production, or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its tools are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging and machines have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

House brands and teaching.

Beyond the designer lines, Ranger sells brands under its own name. Its website lists Archival Ink, which it describes as a permanent, waterproof and fade-resistant ink for crisp stamping; Stickles, a range of glitter glues and gels; Perfect Pearls; and ICE Resin, among others. It describes Perfect Pearls as powders and inks that add shimmer to backgrounds, highlights and washes, and its sister range Liquid Pearls as pearlescent paints for soft shimmer and raised accents; ICE Resin, it says, was developed by the jewellery artist Susan Lenart Kazmer for resin jewellery and mixed-media art. The Tim Holtz Alcohol Inks, Ranger says, are designed for movement, layering and depth on non-porous surfaces. The company says it makes art supplies for mixed-media and jewellery artists, card makers and home-decor crafters, sold in craft stores around the world. Its online shop also stocks other makers’ products, including Tim Holtz cling-mount stamps from Stampers Anonymous.

Teaching is part of the model the company describes. Ranger says its mission is to give artists and crafters a fun, creative and successful experience by developing new products combined with a programme of educational support, and that it teaches crafters and retail store owners alike, covering everything from packaging to techniques, ideas and projects. High-quality products and signature-designer collections, it says, make up its portfolio of brands.

The company trades online as Ranger Ink, at rangerink.com, while its about page uses the full name, Ranger Industries, for the business founded in 1929.

For a design guide, Ranger shows how a maker of banking inks became a craft brand by building ranges around signature designers while keeping its ink-making in New Jersey. Compare Sizzix, which makes Tim Holtz dies, and Spellbinders, another paper-craft name. For this guide we use stain brown, rust and linen with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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