- Currier and Ives and the Lithograph
- "The Grand Central Depot for Cheap and Popular Prints"
- What is today associated with nostalgic scenes, Christmas cards, and historical Americana got its big start as a gruesome and sensational news courier.
- In January of 1840, the steamboat Lexington left New York for Connecticut. It caught fire in Long Island Sound. Only a few of the 140 on board survived the fire and freezing water. Within a week of the disaster, vendors were hustling on the street a special addition of the New York Sun called "The Extra Sun". The feature of the paper was a lithographed artist's drawing of the tragedy. The populace had a morbid interest in the event and the paper was an instant success. The Sun newspaper had contracted with the firm of N. Currier, Lith. & Pub. 2 Spruce St. N. Y.
- Nathaniel Currier also sold a variety of "stock prints", illustrating a vibrant segment of American History, but his best sellers were "rush stock" of current events.
- Between 1835 and 1898 the Currier and Ives Company printed a large number of what was then inexpensive lithographic prints illustrating news and American life themes. They were intended to be art for the common man. Their letterhead stated, "Currier & Ives, Publishers of Cheap and Popular Pictures" and "Colored Engravings for the People". Today these prints are highly prized as valuable works of art and are honored as unique examples of historical Americana.
- Nathaniel Currier conceived them in 1835 and provided the technical and graphic genius. James Ives joined the firm as a business partner in 1857. They were on the cutting edge of printing technology. Lithography, which means "stone writing", got its start in Munich, Germany in 1796. Alois Senefelder, an aspiring playwright , sought an inexpensive way to reproduce his plays, since the profits of one of his earlier successes "went to the printer".
- Senefelder tried writing in reverse on copper etching plates, but found this to be expensive, also. A locally quarried rock floor tile was an alternative. According to one account, his mother asked him to make a laundry list. In a rush, he wrote with a chunk of dried wax ink on the stone. Later, when he went to wash off the stone, he noticed the fact that the porous stone absorbed water everywhere except on the image. This was the basis of the lithographic principle.
- For the firm of Currier and Ives, lithographic printing consisted of drawing the image on a flat stone. This was done by some of the best artists of the day. The stones were usually limestone, because of its rough surface. The image was drawn directly on the surface with a water repelling wax or grease crayon. The stone was dampened with a water, gum, and acid solution. The image areas repelled the water and the non-image areas held a thin film of water in the rough surface of the limestone. Next, ink was applied to the entire surface of the stone. The wet areas repelled the oil-based ink and the image areas, which had repelled the water, now attracted the ink. The lithographic press operator took an impression directly from the stone to paper. The images were later ground off the stone and the stone reused.
- In the original prints, only black was printed. Color was added by hand painters using water colors on an assembly line. A very few later prints were done in multiple colors directly from the stones. Multicolor lithography was called chromolithography.
- The prints sold for six cents apiece, wholesale. Vendors sold thousands through out the country. The "common man's art" of yesterday is the prize of collectors today. And the sometimes sensational of the nineteenth century is nostalgia today.
Copyright (C) 1997 by Frank Granger
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