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History by the bagful

NINA LONG / STAFF William Kantz Jr. holds one of the thousands of printer proofs discovered  in the Werthan Building. During the 1900s, Werthan Bag manufactured textile bags  for hundreds of U.S. companies, such as Pan American Mills of Bowling Green, Ky., that produced foodstuffs. Kantz has preserved the collection and is selling  limited-edition prints of the proofs, as well as producing T-shirts and coffee  mugs with the colorful, nostalgic images on them.

By KEN BECK
Staff  Writer

Entrepreneur William Kantz Jr. is letting history out of the bag as he sheds  light on the colorful legacy of a Nashville business.

It's all about textile bags, manufactured by the millions during the 20th  century by the Werthan Bag Co.

In late 1999, Kantz and Charles Jones were exploring the basement of the  Werthan Building on Eighth Avenue North when they stumbled across thousands of printer proofs.

''It was like inadvertently coming upon a shipwreck in the ocean as a diver,  and you find a chest full of gold,'' said Kantz, 36. ''We went to the second floor and there was about 30 or 40 wood bins filled with prints . . . One print  after another. I couldn't believe it. I thought, 'This is something really unique.' I knew I had to figure out a way to keep it all together.''

The wheels in Kantz's head were spinning. His guide, Jones, was buying the building to renovate and turn into loft apartments (which will be available in  early 2003).

''Charles was more focused on renovation of the building and couldn't give the prints justice like I could, so he decided to sell them to me,'' said Kantz,  who would not disclose the purchase price.

The printer proofs Kantz found were special copies that printers kept that showed exactly what was printed on the burlap and white-cotton fabric bags used  for packaging foodstuffs such as sugar, seeds, beans, fertilizer, meal and  milled flour.

The Werthan printer proofs are not unlike one-of-a-kind stamps. They measure 18 by 24 inches and contain signatures, dates and information on the many  companies that ordered them. The artwork is laden with nostalgic scenes  representing hundreds of companies and their products from the past such as Nashville's Martha White Flour to the Boiling Fork Mill in Winchester, Tenn.

''What you have is a time capsule of these United States companies,'' Kantz  said

The brick buildings where the Werthan Bag Co. churned out its products,  beginning in the early 1900s, were built in the 1870s and 1880s. During its peak years, in the 1970s, Werthan employed approximately 1,200 workers. The company quit making cloth bags in the 1990s, and today, as Werthan Packaging Inc., makes  paper bags for the pet products industry.

''The artwork that William has is so wonderful. It depicts an era that we  won't see again, of family businesses and hundreds and hundreds of small  companies. It's classic Americana,'' said Tony Werthan, chairman of the company.  ''This is a legacy.''

Before Kantz made his discovery, Martha Goldner, a Werthan family friend,  also had found a few of the printer proofs that captured her curiosity. While  working on a project about creating memories and making traditions, she went to Werthan to get muslin for the project.

''I just happened to pull out a number of paper sheets from bins and there they were: the proofs with dolls on them, six to eight different doll patterns, a little horse named Pokey, a little Dutch girl on one side and a Dutch boy on  the other side. There was a Wendy Werthan doll. You would buy that particular product, so the parent would want to use it to make the toy for their  child.''

Recognizing the history in the prints, Kantz wanted to document  everything.

''I had to categorize the printer proofs. It has taken a solid four months of  hard work by someone I trust. She has inventoried them by city, state, company name, quality of the print, graded them from good to poor, identified the number  of colors and given a description,'' he said.

Kantz now has a Web site that offers limited reproductions ($35) and open reproductions ($10) of the colorful,  printer proofs, as well as coffee mugs ($5) and T-shirts ($10). He has submitted  the proofs to the United States Postal Service for consideration as a limited  stamp collection.

''I think I have a good shot. They have 12 criteria and these meet all of  them,'' the entrepreneur said.

He hopes to display some of the printer proofs next year at Nashville  International Airport.

© 2002 PrinterProofs.com