Obituary of Gustaf Berg Lindquist

Gustaf Berg Lindquist, a pioneer in the printing ink manufacturing industry and inventor of the Pantone Matching System, died on February 26. He was 88. Only son of the late Dr. Gustav H. and Ruth E. (Berg) Lindquist, he was born in Worcester, MA, on September 20, 1923. He graduated from North High School and was admitted to the Harvard College class of 1944, but graduated in 1943 in the accelerated wartime program with a degree in English history. After brief studies at Tufts Medical School, the government sent him to work in the research laboratories of Dewey & Almy Chemical in Cambridge. At the end of the war, finding himself well-suited to chemistry, he remained at Dewey & Almy, working on can sealing compounds, aerosol bombs, shoe adhesives, dipped rubber products, and during the Korean War, the development of plastic hot melts as a substitute for war-short tin solder. In 1952 he joined the United States Envelope Company Laboratory in Worcester. From 1953 to 1958 he developed inks for the new transparent films—treated polyethylene, Mylar, and Saran-coated cellophane. At this time he produced the first of the color matching systems for which he became known. In 1958 he joined Lewis Roberts, Inc., in Newark, NJ, where he worked with lithographic printing inks for the first time. He enjoyed the challenge of applying fundamental technical information to different industries, such as adhesives, coatings, rubber, and inks. His family recalls home basement shelves lined with experimental formulations such as coatings he applied to kitchen pans years before nonstick cookware was available commercially. For two years he collaborated with Norman Klawunn on the development and production of the Lewis Roberts Matchmaster Color System, the first wet offset split foundation color system produced by Pantone. In 1963 he became Technical Director of Pantone, and was responsible for the technical development of the Pantone Matching System, which printers and graphic designers to this day consider the worldwide standard for color matching. In 1965 Van Son Holland Ink Corporation of America purchased from Pantone the ink manufacturing plant Mr. Lindquist had set up to service the Pantone Matching System. He became General Manager of the renamed entity, New York Printing Ink Company, as well as of the Boston Printing Ink Company. In 1968 he purchased Boston Printing Ink Company from Van Son, and in 1979 the company became a division of Van Son. He served as President of Boston Printing Ink from 1968 through 1991 and Vice President of Van Son from 1979 to 1991. Upon his retirement from Van Son the company retained him as consultant on environmental affairs. In 1982 he organized the New England Printing Ink Association, and served as its secretary until 1991. The National Association of Printing Ink Manufacturers (NAPIM) recognized Mr. Lindquist in 1982 with the President’s Service Award, in 1983 with the Pioneer Award, and in 1992 with its highest honor, the Ault Award for long and meritorious service to the printing ink industry. He was a board member of NAPIM for many years and a 60-year member of the American Chemical Society. Mr. Lindquist lived in Princeton, NJ, from 1955 to 1973, during which time his family spent summers in Duxbury. The family moved to Duxbury year-round in 1973. He was a member of the Duxbury Senior Men’s Group and the Church of St. John the Evangelist. An avid sports fan, he held season tickets to the Red Sox, belonged to the Harvard Stadium Club, and followed the trials and tribulations of Harvard football and hockey. A knowledgeable collector of Scandinavian stamps, he enjoyed researching the history of his family’s immigration from Sweden in the 1880s. He was a loyal supporter of the Harvard Band, in which he had played the tuba. The band’s motto, which he adopted as his own, is “Illegitimum non carborundum.” In addition to his wife of almost 62 years, Ingrid Virginia (Berglund), he leaves five children, Wendy, wife of Kurt Lutz; Jane, of Arlington, VA; Donna, of Austin, TX., Glenn, of Houston, TX; Ann Marie, wife of Robert Weisskoff, of Lexington, MA; four grandchildren, Jason Mills and wife Anna, of Taunton, MA; and Sophie, Zoe, and Leo Weisskoff, of Lexington, MA; as well as a great-granddaughter, Alexis Mills, of Taunton, MA. A memorial service will take place at the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Duxbury on Saturday, April 21 at 11 am. Burial will be private. In lieu of flowers donations may be made to the Harvard Band Foundation, attention Tom Everett, 74 Mt. Auburn St., Cambridge, MA 02138-5051.