Currier and Ives

Currier & Ives American lithographers and print publishers, who produced highly popular hand-colored prints of contemporary scenes and events in American life. Nathaniel Currier, 1813-88, b. Roxbury, Mass., founded the business in New York City in 1835, and in 1857 formed a partnership with the able artist and businessman James Merritt Ives, 1824-95, b. New York City. The prints, in which were depicted horses, yachts, trains, newsworthy events, and scenes of nature and outdoor recreation, have become prized collectors' items. Both Currier's and Ives's sons followed their fathers in the business, which was eventually liquidated in 1907.

Bibliography: See H. T. Peters, Currier & Ives, Printmakers to the American People (1929, special ed. 1942); J. L. Pratt, ed., Currier & Ives Chronicles of America (1968).

Currier and Ives, lithographers and print publishers, famous in the second half of the 19th century for depicting aspects of American life ranging from sporting events to caricatures to sentimental and homely subjects. Nathaniel Currier, who founded the New York firm (1835), was associated with J. Merritt Ives (1850), and after 1857 their two names were signed to the prints. Widely circulated, crudely colored, and naïvely drawn, the prints are topically interesting but have little artistic value despite their rarity as collectors' items.