Changing Times for a Maker of Very Important Paper.

AFTER more than 200 years as a wholly family-owned company, Crane & Company, a famed producer of fine stationery based in Dalton, Mass., sold a minority share to the New York investment firm Lindsay Goldberg last summer. The sole paper supplier for United States currency, the company has been on a deal-making spree. Last May, it signed an agreement to produce stationery under the Disney brand. And in December, it purchased Atlanta-based Visual Physics, whose anticounterfeiting technology will allow Crane to enhance the security of paper money in the United States and other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]