The Story of the Schacht Sheep and Logo

June 15, 2021

OUR LOGO

(originally printed in our 50th Anniversary catalog)

In 1971, Barry and his friend Burt Gold were touring Ireland by car when Barry spotted this group of sheep on a hillside just outside of Dublin. He leaned out of the car window and snapped this photo in the morning mist. We started using the sheep as our logo shortly after he returned to Colorado.

Even though the photo was in color, we first used a black-and-white image because we could not afford color printing. In the early years, the logo appeared on decals and metal plaques that were applied to our products. In the late 1980s, we started woodburning the logo into our products—a marking that’s stuck.

We’ve had a lot of fun with our Schacht Sheep. We’ve commissioned paintings and tapestries, drawings and embossings. We’ve embroidered, silkscreened, and sculpted them. When Jane first met Barry, he was trying to make chocolate bars with an embossed sheep logo.

In 2014, we worked with our graphic designer, Michael Signorella of Studio Signorella, to reimagine our logo in a more contemporary style. It is simpler yet true to the original picturesque gathering of the flock.

WHAT BREED ARE THE SCHACHT SHEEP?

In our industry, when you want to use sheep for a logo, your customers demand to know what kind, so Barry wrote to the British Wool Marketing Board to find out more about the Schacht Sheep.

Here, in part, is the answer he received: “The consensus of opinion is that numbers 2, 4, and 5 ‘appear’ to be a Border Leicester-Cheviot cross. Number 1 could be a Greyface (Scotch Blackface X Border Leicester) crossed with Cheviot, as the wool appears to have a lustrous and coarser appearance than the other sheep depicted. Sheep number 3 may again be a Border Leicester-Cheviot cross, although the facial colouration may mean the involvement of a further breed.”

COMMISSIONS OF THE SCHACHT SHEEP

Over the years, many artists have made their version of the Schacht Sheep. Our most recent version was a painting by Boulder artist Catherine Pistone. We’ve made these into gorgeous greeting cards! See below for a few examples of the many artistic forms the Schacht Sheep have been imagined as over the years.

The Schacht Sheep commissioned painting by Catherine Pistone

Porcelain Schacht Sheep by Colin Richmond

Schacht Sheep painted by Terry Harrison

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