Currier and Ives
Founded by Nathaniel Currier, the company designed and sold inexpensive hand-painted lithographic works based on news events, views of popular culture and Americana.
[citation needed] Nathaniel worked a series of odd jobs to support the family and, at fifteen, he started what became a lifelong career when he apprenticed in the Boston lithography shop of William and John Pendleton.
[citation needed] In 1835, he created a lithograph that illustrated a fire sweeping through New York City's business district.
Currier realized that there was a market for current news, so he turned out several more disaster prints and other inexpensive lithographs that illustrated local and national events, such as "Ruins of the Planter's Hotel, New Orleans, which fell at two O'clock on the Morning of May 15, 1835, burying 50 persons, 40 of whom Escaped with their Lives".
Nathaniel Currier soon noticed Ives's dedication to his business, and his artistic knowledge and insight into what the public wanted.
The younger man quickly became the general manager of the firm, handling the financial side of the business by modernizing the bookkeeping, reorganizing inventory, and streamlining the print process.
For the original drawings, Currier and Ives employed or used the work of many celebrated artists of the day, including James E. Buttersworth, George Inness, Thomas Nast, Eastman Johnson, and others.
Skilled artist lithographers such as John Cameron, Fanny Palmer, and others became known for their work and signed important pieces.
The Currier and Ives firm branched out from its central shop in New York City to sell prints via pushcart vendors, peddlers, and book stores.
It also sold work through the mail (prepaid orders only), and internationally through a London office and agents in Europe.
[9][7] The 19th-century Victorian public was receptive to the firm's products, with its interest in current events and sentimental taste.
[citation needed] The prints depicted a variety of images of American life, including winter scenes, horse-racing images, portraits of people, and pictures of ships, sporting events, patriotic, and historical events, including ferocious battles of the American Civil War, the building of cities and railroads, and Lincoln's assassination.
"Currier used a cotton based, medium to heavy weight paper depending on the folio size for his prints until the late 1860s.
Today, original Currier and Ives prints are much sought by collectors, and modern reproductions of them are popular decorations.
"[23]: 104 The Darktown Comics series was perennially among the bestselling of Currier and Ives' over 7000 lithographs, with at least one selling 73,000 copies via pushcarts and in shops and country stores.
[28]: 197 Thomas Worth recreated a previous Statue of Liberty image, using an African American woman similar to the mammy figure holding a torch as part of their Darktown Comics series.
