“There's a happy feeling nothing in the world can buy
when they pass around the coffee and the pumpkin pie.
It'll nearly be like a picture print by Currier and Ives --
these wonderful things are the things
we remember all through our lives!”Sleigh Ride, by Mitchell Parish and Leroy Anderson
“Currier & Ives” was the name used by a New York printmaking firm from 1857 until 1907. Neither Currier nor Ives was an artist of any note; all the prints they published were drawn and lithographed by others. Their incredible output and popularity, however, brought artistic images into American homes to an unprecedented extent.
Nathaniel Currier was born on March 27, 1813, in Roxbury, Massachusetts. His father died when Nathaniel was only eight, and the young boy and his older brother Lorenzo began to work odd jobs to support themselves, their mother, and two younger siblings. When he turned 15, Nathaniel was apprenticed to William and John Pendleton, who owned a lithography shop in Boston. Lithography was a relatively new art form in 1828; Nathaniel was taught the technique by the Pendleton firm’s chief printer, who learned it in France.
Nathaniel Currier worked for the Pendleton brothers for five years before moving to Philadelphia in 1833. He stayed there for one year, working with a local printer to produce images for the American Journal of Sciences and Arts. By 1834 John Pendleton, Currier’s former employer, had opened a printing shop in New York City and Currier moved to Manhattan to join him. Shortly thereafter Pendleton returned to Boston. Currier and another printer bought Pendleton’s business, and the firm of Stodart & Currier was launched. Stodart left within a year, and 22-year-old Nathaniel Currier opened his own shop: “N. Currier, Lithographer.”
For the next 21 years Currier printed everything from sheet music to architectural drawings. In the mid-1830s he also began to produce scenes of contemporary events – newspapers at the time did not have pictures – which sold well, broadened his reputation, and provided financial stability for the young printer.
In 1840 Nathaniel Currier married Eliza Farnsworth; their first child, Edward West Currier, was born a year later. About this time Nathaniel hired his older brother Lorenzo and his younger brother Charles to work for him producing sketches and prints. Nathaniel and Eliza had a second child, Eliza West Currier, in 1843. This child’s health was precarious, however, and she died at the age of 4; her grief-stricken mother died several months later. Nathaniel was a 34-year-old widower with a 6-year-old son.
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