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Jay T. Last Collection of Printing and Publishing: Louis Prang Archive: Finding
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Title: Jay T. Last Collection of Printing and Publishing: Louis Prang Archive
Dates (inclusive): approximately 1857-1918
Bulk dates: 1860-1897
Collection Number: priJLC_PRG
Collector:
Last, Jay T.
Extent:
approximately 3,630 items
Repository:
The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.
Prints and Ephemera
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, California 91108
Phone: (626) 405-2191
Email: reference@huntington.org
URL: http://www.huntington.org
Abstract: The Louis Prang Archive, a subset of the Jay T. Last Collection of Printing and Publishing, contains over 3,650
items dating from 1857 to 1916, with the bulk of the items spanning from 1860 to 1897. This archive chronicles the business
history of Boston lithographer Louis Prang through art prints,
advertisements, printed volumes, and promotional ephemera produced by L. Prang & Co. and its successor companies: Prang Educational
Company and Taber Prang Art Co. The archive also contains catalogs,
certificates, price lists, business records and correspondence, personal letters and photographs, news clippings, and original
art considered for lithographic reproduction.
Language: English and German.
Note:
Finding aid last updated on August 14, 2017.
Open to qualified researchers by prior application through the Reader Services Department. For more information, contact Reader
Services.
The Huntington Library does not require that researchers request permission to quote from or publish images of this material,
nor does it charge fees for such activities.
The responsibility for identifying the copyright holder, if there is one, and obtaining necessary permissions rests with the
researcher.
[Item title, Call number]. Jay T. Last Collection of Printing and Publishing: Louis Prang Archive, The Huntington Library,
San Marino, California.
This collection forms part of the Jay T. Last Collection of Graphic Arts and Social History, which was
donated to the Huntington Library by Jay T. Last in 2005 as a gift in progress. The bulk of the Louis Prang Archive was transferred to the Library between 2010 and 2012.
The Jay T. Last Collection is an unparalleled archive of printed paper artifacts that documents American lithographic, social,
and business history. The collection began in the early 1970s when
physicist and Silicon Valley pioneer Jay Last moved to Southern California and started collecting citrus box labels he found
at local flea markets and rummage sales. As his collection grew,
Last realized that these labels conveyed important information about commercial printing, graphic design, and social history,
and he expanded his collection to include other forms
of American visual culture. Today this collection contains more than 200,000 lithographic prints, posters, and ephemera of
mostly nineteenth- and early twentieth- century American
origin and represents works by more than five hundred lithographic companies.
Louis Prang (1824-1909) was a printer, lithographer, and publisher who is sometimes referred to as the “father of the American
Christmas card.” He introduced holiday greeting cards to America, developed and promoted the year-round tradition of
exchanging cards, and became the key producer of American greeting cards for decades.
Prang was born in Breslau in Prussian Silesia. As a teen, he apprenticed in his father’s fabric printing and dyeing factory.
After arriving in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1850 and finding few opportunities for textile printers, he worked as an engraver
and a lithographer.
In 1856 he formed a partnership with Julius Mayer as Prang & Mayer, producing business cards, scenic views, and advertising
posters. Prang founded his own firm in 1860, L. Prang & Co., and made it one of the most significant American color lithographic
establishments of the 19th century.
L. Prang & Co. printed maps, battle scenes, and military portraits during the Civil War. In 1866 the firm introduced color
picture cards in sets, and chromolithographs of fine art paintings that sold briskly. By December 1867 Prang had launched
a quarterly periodical called
Prang’s Chromo, A Journal of Popular Art, to promote and sell his prints. The publication ran until 1871, helping L. Prang & Co. become known for the artistic and
technical quality of their "chromos."
Prang continued to expand his product line, adding greeting cards in 1874. They sold so well that in 1881 he printed almost
5 million cards. Prang also achieved success producing botanical and natural history lithographs as decorative prints, cards,
and book illustrations for such titles as Selmar Hess’s
Our Living World and Prang’s own
Natural History Series for Children. Also around this time, 1882, he started the Prang Educational Company, publishers of books on art education. Then in 1897
Prang produced his pinnacle achievement,
Oriental Ceramic Art. This catalogue, comprising ten large folios, featured 116 chromolithographs of vases and other decorative objects from
the W. T. Walters collection. It is a benchmark work in lithographic quality and scope, with each plate
requiring from 20 to 44 separate lithographic stones to print.
In 1898, L. Prang & Co. became the Taber Prang Art Company and relocated to Springfield, Massachusetts. Louis Prang retired
from active business in 1899 and passed away in Los Angeles on June 14, 1909, but the companies he founded lived on. In 1912,
the Prang Educational Company changed its name to the Prang Company, and the Taber Prang Art Co. continued operations until
1937.
The Jay T. Last Collection of Printing and Publishing: Louis Prang Archive contains over 3,650
items dating from 1857 to 1916, with the bulk of the items spanning from 1860 to 1897. This archive chronicles the business
history of Boston lithographer Louis Prang through art prints,
advertisements, printed volumes, and promotional ephemera produced by L. Prang & Co. and its successor companies: Prang Educational
Company and Taber Prang Art Co. The archive also contains catalogs,
certificates, price lists, business records and correspondence, personal letters and photographs, news clippings, and original
art considered for lithographic reproduction.
Materials are broadly divided into two series: printed materials (primarily items produced by or for the business) and manuscript
materials (primarily items documenting business operations and the personal life of Louis Prang).
Series I is further divided into three subseries: small size prints and ephemera (11 x 14 inches or smaller), large size prints
and ephemera (larger than 11 x 14 inches), and hardbound volumes.
Small-size items 8 x 10 inches or smaller are described broadly at the series level; large-size items and most small-size
items between 8 x 10 inches and 11 x 14 inches in size are fully inventoried with printers,
artists, and publishers indexed by name. The collection includes over 260 large-size items comprised mainly of lithographic
art prints produced by L. Prang & Co.
Small-size items number approximately 3,200 and contain a variety of materials including album cards, trade cards, calendars,
booklets, catalogs, greeting cards, proof books, sample books,
clippings, and small-format lithographed prints. Hardbound volumes number approximately 40 and include illustrated books with
verses, art instruction texts, and children’s natural
history educational books, as well as Prang’s pinnacle achievement,
Oriental Ceramic Art, a sumptuously lithographed catalogue in ten volumes featuring Asian ceramics from the collection of Baltimore businessman
William T. Walters (1820-1894).
Series II contains mainly manuscript business correspondence, as well as memo and stock books, letters patent certificates,
personal letters, and a small number of photographs. The bulk of the material is in English, but a small amount of
correspondence is written in German.
The collection provides a resource for studying the business and output of one of the most influential major lithographic
firms in the United States in the 19th century. The images provide information about American tastes and culture
as well as the evolution of advertising strategies in the 19th and early 20th centuries. As graphic materials, the prints
offer evidence of developing techniques and trends in printmaking, and of the artists,
lithographers, printers, and publishers involved in the creative process.
Alternative Form of Materials Available
Visit the
Huntington Digital Library: Jay T. Last Collection
to view digitized items from this collection.
Related materials in the Huntington Library
- Huntington Library Greeting Card Collection
- Huntington Library Louis Prang Collection
The collection is arranged in the following series:
- Series I. Printed materials
- Subseries A. Prints and ephemera (small size)
- Subseries B. Prints and ephemera (large size)
- Subseries C. Hardbound volumes
- Series II. Manuscripts, business records, and photographs
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the
Huntington Library's Online Catalog.
Advertisements.
Album cards.
Albums.
Business cards.
Business records -- United States -- 19th century.
Catalogs.
Certificates.
Chromolithographs.
Ephemera.
Ephemera -- United States -- 19th century.
Greeting cards.
Handbills.
Intaglio prints.
Leaflets (printed works)
Letters (Correspondence).
Letterheads.
Lithographs.
Manuscripts.
Paintings.
Patents.
Periodicals.
Photographs.
Portrait prints.
Printed ephemera.
Progressive proofs.
Proofs.
Promotional materials.
Relief prints.
Sample books.
Trade cards.
Views.
Animals -- Pictorial works.
Autumn -- Pictorial works.
Babies -- Pictorial works.
Baskets -- Pictorial works.
Battlefields -- Pictorial works.
Battles -- Pictorial works.
Birds -- Pictorial works.
Boats and boating -- Pictorial works.
Boys -- Pictorial works.
Children -- Pictorial works.
Coasts -- Pictorial works.
Crosses -- Pictorial works.
Dogs -- Pictorial works.
Dwellings -- Pictorial works.
Exhibition buildings -- Pictorial works.
Exhibitions -- Pictorial works.
Farms -- Pictorial works.
Flowers -- Pictorial works.
Fruit -- Pictorial works.
Game and game-birds -- Pictorial works.
Girls -- Pictorial works.
Horses -- Pictorial works.
L. Prang & Co. -- Archives.
Landscapes -- Pictorial works.
Lithography.
Livestock -- Pictorial works.
Men -- Pictorial works.
Prang, Louis, 1824-1909 -- Pictorial works.
Printing industry.
Rivers -- Pictorial works.
Roses -- Pictorial works.
Sailboats -- Pictorial works.
Seasons -- Pictorial works.
Ships -- Pictorial works.
Soldiers -- Pictorial works.
Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition (1898 : Omaha, Neb.) -- Pictorial works.
Trees -- Pictorial works.
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Pictorial works.
Vases -- Pictorial works.
Women -- Pictorial works.
Printer, Publisher, Artist Index
The following is a complete list of printers, publishers, and artists represented in the item-level cataloged materials in
this collection.
Allen, Grace Barton
Anderson, Sophie, 1823-1903
Annin & Smith
Ansdell, Richard, 1815-1885
Bartholomew, William N. (William Newton), 1822-1898
Bee Publishing Co.
Bensell, Edmund Birckhead, 1842-
Bierstadt, Albert, 1830-1902
Bleischwitz, J. (Joseph)
Bonsall, M. W.
Borsigian, B. H.
Bricher, Alfred Thompson, 1837-1908
Bridges, Fidelia, 1834-1923
Brown, John George, 1831-1913
Brown, Matilda
Brownscombe, Jennie Augusta, 1850-1936
Bruith, A.
C.C. Corbett & Co.
Callowhill, James
Callowhill, Sidney
Chamberlin, Grace M.
Champney, Benjamin, 1817-1907
Church, Frederick S. (Frederick Stuart), 1842-1924
Comins, Elizabeth B. (Elizabeth Barker)
Coomans, J. (Joseph), 1816-1890
Correggio, 1489?-1534
Cruickshank, W.
Davidson, Julian Oliver, 1853-1894
De Haas, Mauritz Frederik Hendrik, 1832-1895
Dougal, William H., 1822-1895
Duffield, William, Mrs., 1819-1914
Durand, A. B. (Asher Brown), 1796-1886
Edmonds, S. C.
Eglau, 1824 or 1825-1896
Fabronius, Dominique C.
Fausel, D.
Ferguson, H. A.
Field, L. B.
Fisher, Ellen T.
Fortuny, Mariano, 1838-1874
Gifford, John, -1900
Girardet, Eugene
Granbery, V.
Harlow, Louis K. (Louis Kinney), 1850-1913
Harring, W.
Hart, James McDougal, 1828-1901
Hart, Mary Theresa
Hatfield (Artist)
Hill, Thomas, 1829-1908
Hills, Laura Coombs, 1859-1952
J.E. Purdy & Co. (Boston, Mass.)
Johnson, Eastman, 1824-1906
Jourdain, Henri, 1864-1931
Key, John Ross, 1832-1920
Klein, Catharina, 1861-1929
Knobel, Edward, 1839-1908
L. Prang & Co.
Lamson, Wolffe & Co.
Landseer, Edwin Henry, Sir, 1802-1873
Lautenberger, Ferd.
Lee, J. (Jennie)
Longpré, Paul de, 1855-1911
Marecek, Frank J.
Mazzanovich, J.
Metz, Aug. C.
Meyer, A. C.
Meyer, Johann Georg, 1813-1886
Moore, Nina, active 1857-1875
Moradei, Arturo, 1840-1901
Moser, James Henry, 1854-1913
Murphy, John Francis, 1853-1921
Nast, Thomas, 1840-1902
National Bank Note Company
Niles, George E., 1837-1898
Nowak, E., 1851-1919
Nowell, Annie C. (Annie Cornelia), 1842-1935
Ochtman, Leonard
Palmer, Walter Launt, 1854-1932
Parker, Elizabeth F. (Elizabeth Frothingham), 1850-
Parsons, A. Wilde
Penniman, John Ritto, 1782 or 1783-1841
Pilule
Pope, Alexander, 1849-1924
Post, May Audubon, -1929
Prang & Mayer.
Prang Company
Prang Educational Company
Rebholtz, William
Rhead, Louis, 1857-1926
Rigby, Burnham
Rigolot, A.
Robinson, Will S., 1861-1945
Russell, Benjamin, 1804-1885.
Ryan, C.
Sandorff, G.
Schroeder, Friedrich (Lithographer)
Scientific Pub. Co. (New York, N.Y.)
Scott, Julian, 1846-1901.
Stone, Benjamin Bellows Grant, 1829-1906
Stumm, Maud
Taber Prang Art Co.
Tait, Arthur Fitzwilliam, 1819-1905
Thulstrup, Thure de, 1848-1930
Turner, Ross, 1847-1915
Tyler, James G.
Wyngaerdt, A. J. van (Anthonie Jacobus), 1808-1887
Vibert, J. G. (Jehan Georges), 1840-1902
Wagner, E.
Wagner, K. (Karl), 1839-1923
Waud, William, -1878.
Waugh, Ida, -1919
Welch, Thaddeus, 1844-1919
Wells, Newton A. (Newton Alonzo), 1852-1923
Whitney, Olive E.