Currier & Ives “A Home in the Wilderness”

Currier & Ives.  “A Home in the Wilderness.”  New York: Currier & Ives, 1870.  Lithograph.  Original hand color.  Small folio.  8 x 12 1/2.  Paper time-toned.  Mat burn in margins.  Repaired tear upper right hand corner margin.  Old hinging tape on verso.  Sold as is.  New Best 50 #17.  C:2861.  A/A Professional paper conservation will increase the visual appeal and value of the print.  From 1834 to 1907 the firm of Currier & 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,