Appreciating Scenes of Currier & Ives Prints

Currier & Ives sold colored lithographs for as little as 5 cents each, but today collectors pay thousands of dollars for certain prints that originally sold for $3 or less.

A classic story, related by Marjorie E. Gage in an article in Country Living, involves an Ohio man whose bid of 80 cents at a 1949 auction won him a picture. The buyer wanted the frame but on removing the picture discovered a mid-19th century Currier & Ives hand-colored lithograph, The Life of a Hunter--”A Tight Fix.” It was valued then at $4,000 and today holds the record auction price for a Currier & Ives print, fetching $63,000 in 1993.

Most experts credit the Currier & Ives prints’ recognition as collectible art to Harry T. Peters, who by the 1890s had begun accumulating, researching, writing about and exhibiting works published by Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives from 1834 to 1898.

Peters’ collection inspired others to take the works seriously, eventually leading to a dramatic rise in price. Small folio prints, hand-colored assembly line fashion, sold for about 20 cents each, while the more expertly colored large folios bore price tags of $1 to $3.

Currier began his publishing apprenticeship in Boston in 1828 and established his shop in New York seven years later. Ives became Currier’s partner in 1857; under the name Currier & Ives they published and sold more prints than all their competitors combined.

All 7,000 or so prints bore titles that contributed in some degree to their charm and success.

In 1932, Peters, Charles Messer Stow, arts editor of the now-defunct New York Sun, and Harry Shaw Newman collaborated to list “The Best Fifty” N. Currier and Currier & Ives large-folio lithos, followed by a companion list citing “The Best Fifty” small folios.

“Twenty-five years ago, when I began collecting, people generally wanted to form collections of ‘the best 50’ large folios and ‘the best 50’ small folios,” said dealer Robert Kipp, of Beverly, Mass. “In the past seven or eight years, though, things have begun to change, with collectors choosing a niche--fishing, regattas or whatever--and finding as many Currier & Ives prints in good condition as they can within that category.”

Hunting and sporting scenes, always appealing, have continued to appreciate, as have western prints. Equestrian and marine scenes have held their own, without dramatic ups or downs.

Fruit and flower scenes, once sleepers, have appreciated of late. Kipp said they range from about $175 for a small folio fruit print to about $6,000 to $7,000 for a large folio fruit and flowers image.

Religious prints and sentimental images are $65 to $85, but few dealers foresee these appreciating.

Perhaps the worst buys from an investment standpoint are images whose titles have been cut off. Many consider a Currier & Ives without a title virtually worthless.

Said Kipp: “I consider these prints 10-percenters, though, worth only about 10% of what the same print with its title intact would be worth.”