On this day in New York · March 5, 1824
The Bookkeeper Who Became 'Ives' of Currier and Ives
A superintendent's son with no formal art training was born in New York City today, and he'd go on to decide what an entire century of Americans hung over their mantels.
The facts
- Born
- March 5, 1824, New York City
- Hired by Currier
- 1852, as a bookkeeper
- Made partner
- 1857, when the firm was renamed Currier and Ives
- Firm's output
- at least 7,500 lithographs over 72 years in business
James Merritt Ives was born in New York City on March 5, 1824, the son of the superintendent of Bellevue Hospital. He never trained formally as an artist, but in 1852 the lithographer Nathaniel Currier hired him as a bookkeeper anyway, and it did not take long for Currier to notice his new hire had opinions about what actually sold. By 1857 Currier had made him a full partner and general manager, and the shop was renamed Currier and Ives. From a print house on Nassau Street, Ives pushed the firm past its early run of fires and shipwrecks toward sleigh rides, clipper ships, and fireside scenes, the cheap, cheerful lithographs that ended up on parlor walls from the Bowery to the prairie.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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It was Ives who encouraged production of the idealized images of daily middle class American life that made the firm so successful.
Wikipedia's entry on James Merritt Ives
Source: Wikipedia -
Publishers of Cheap and Popular Prints
Currier and Ives' own self-description, per Wikipedia
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
Currier and Ives prints were about as close as 19th century America got to mass media imagery, and Ives is the reason so many of them are warm and domestic instead of just Currier's early diet of fires and wrecks. A bookkeeper with a good eye ended up shaping how the whole country pictured itself, which is a very New York way to end up famous.
Sources
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