"WE'VE HAD A HEALTHY TIME!"
CURRIER & IVES (published by)
TECHNIQUE: Lithography
A satirical scene: a woman comes home and finds out that her "pets",
including a monkey and a parrot, dog and cats, made a mess in the room.
SIZE: 322mm(H) x 450mm(L) [sheet]
NOTE:
Original lithograph printed on wove paper, finely hand-coloured.
Published by CURRIER & IVES, 115 Nassau St. New York.
In excellent condition, very bright colours.
Paper slightly worned marginally, a tear [8mm] on upper margin on the right.
Currier & Ives produced their prints in a building at 33 Spruce Street where they occupied the third, fourth and fifth floors.
The third floor was devoted to the hand operated printing presses that were built by Nat''s cousin,
Cyrus Currier, at his shop Cyrus Currier & Sons in Newark, NJ.
The fourth floor found the artists, lithographers and the stone grinders at work.
The fifth floor housed the colouring department,
and was one of the earliest production lines in the country.
The colorists were generally immigrant girls, mostly German,
who came to America with some formal artistic training.
Each colorist was responsible for adding a single colour to a print.
As a colorist finished applying their colour, the print was passed down
the line to the next colorist to add their colour.
The colorists worked from a master print displayed above their table,
which showed where the proper colours were to be placed.
At the end of the table was a touch up artist who checked the prints for quality,
touching-in areas that may have been missed as it passed down the line.
During the Civil War, demand for prints became so great that colouring stencils were developed to speed up production.