Currier & Ives "Prairie Hens."

Currier & Ives. "Prairie Hens." Currier & Ives, 1872-74. Small folio. ca. 8 1/2 x 12 1/2. Lithograph.  Original hand color.  Wide margins.  Stain at top margin edge, not affecting image. C:4860. A/A From 1834 to 1907 the firm of Currier and Ives provided for the American people a pictorial history of their country’s growth from an agricultural society to an industrialized one.  For nearly three quarters of a century the firm provided “Colored Engravings for the People” and in the process, because of the democratic philosophy of the business, became the visual raconteurs of nineteenth-century America.  Nathaniel Currier established the firm in 1834, producing hand-colored pictures using a then relatively new process called lithography.  Some of the finest artists of the day, Louis Maurer, Thomas Worth, Arthur Fitzwilliam Tait, Frances Flora Bond Palmer, George H. Durrie, Napoleon Sarony, Charles Parsons, and J. E. Butterworth were engaged by the firm to produce a variety of imag