Lowering the curtain on the Currier & Ives Darktown Prints

I own a business which sells images of the past. Many of them are decorative or interesting in their own right, but to me one of the most important things about the old prints we sell is that they are historic artifacts. That is, they are evidence from our past, bringing their stories to the present. They tell us not only about the things they show, but also about what was of interest to the public at the time—-or at least what their publishers thought would be of interest—-and they tell us how the public at the time saw its world.

Past public attitudes are not always ones we agree with, nor even condone, but I have long argued that it is a mistake to ignore or trash historic artifacts that reflect beliefs we do not agree with. As George Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” That is, it is crucial for us to learn about our past so that we can try to correct where we have gone wrong. For that reason, even abhorrent historic artifacts should be preserved and studied.

Our modus operandi has always been, that even if I did not agree with what a particular print depicted, we would offer it for sale so that someone interested in it—-hopefully for historic reasons—-could have access to it. On that basis, though I abhor the social implications of the Currier & Ives Darktown prints, I have felt it appropriate to have my shop offer them for sale. I no longer feel that to be the case.

So, what are the Currier & Ives Darktown prints? They are a series of prints which America’s most successful popular printmaker made from the late 1870s into the 1890s, showing supposedly humorous episodes in Darktown, a segregated community of black Americans. Darktown prints showcased a full array of negative stereotypes of the former slaves who moved north after the Civil War. Portrayed as mentally slow, physically grotesque, and morally oblivious, African Americans were shown as comically inept in their attempts to “play-act” at being white.

Horrifyingly, these prints were among the most popular of all Currier & Ives prints, with one image supposedly selling as many as 73,000 copies. Why that was so and what it means are things worth trying to understand, and there have been institutions and scholars who have approached the Darktown series in this way. I think that is important for our understanding of our past and also of our present to look at these issues.

This then raises the question of why I have decided we would no longer sell the Darktown prints. Certainly, to simply sell such a print is not to advocate for its racist message; we have sold them for many years despite the fact that I think what they show is terrible. As it happens, almost all of the Darktown prints we have sold have been to academic institutions or to African American collectors. Still, I now believe we should not be selling them at all.

The current national reexamination of our society’s racial inequities has made me rethink how we should treat these prints. I have come to believe that even if one does not present them as something one believes, racist images like these should not be presented to the public, except in a clearly restricted historic/educational venue. To have images like these out in public-—on display in a shop, at a show or on the internet—-creates a social environment which is detrimental to universal racial equality.

The point is that it is not what you mean by selling the prints, it is what they show and how that adds to the negative experience that African Americans have in our society. This is very similar to the issue of the display of Confederate statues in the South, and as I believe those statues should be taken out of public spaces, so too I believe the Darktown prints should be removed from public display. Every image that is out in public showing how in the past Blacks were thought of as inferior adds to the background noise insidiously whispering that they are not equal today. Their display, even if not meant this way, reminds both Blacks and Whites that in the not too distant past it was the social norm that the latter considered themselves to be superior to the former. This, in effect, becomes part of the systemic message of racial inequality that still permeates our country.

We need to effect many changes to bring about true racial equality in our country, both as a society and as individuals, and I think no longer selling or displaying the Darktown prints is something we can do to help, albeit in a small way. On that basis, we are donating all of our current inventory of Darktown prints to scholarly institutions, taking the images out of the general public environment and relegating them to the vaults of historic institutions. This is surely just a small step toward racial equality, but hopefully it is one of many such small steps our society will now be making.

Drop in prices of antiques since 2000

A number of months ago, Antiques Roadshow broadcast one of their "vintage" shows, this one showing appraisals from Birmingham in 1999. That was from only the third year of the show, the second year in which I appeared as a print and map appraiser. Watching it, the first thing that I noticed was how young everyone looked. A fair number of the appraisers who appeared in this episode are still appraising for ARS and everyone looked so much younger (of course, I haven't aged a bit...)

The second thing I noticed was how about 3/4's of items had current values below (and often well below) the original appraised values. The show initially puts up the original appraised value, and then after a pause (to let you guess which way the value has gone), they post the current appraised value. In the vintage Birmingham show, from almost twenty years ago, only a couple current values were higher than the original values and just a few were the same. By far most of the new values were below the original appraisals. So what does that mean?

This reflects the fact that, as a general rule, antiques have gone down in value since the turn of the millennium. Part of that is because in the last decade of the twentieth century, prices for antiques were quite strong. Antique shows were going strong, decorators were keen on using antiques in homes and even offices, and there were lots of established and new collectors seeking out the best antiques of all sorts.

In general, it was for the "top end" antiques that prices were steadily going up, the "low end" rising a bit, but really not that much. The advent of Antiques Roadshow reflected the popularity of antiques at the time and also helped to sustain the rise in interest and prices. Of course, in general the appraisals which were shown on ARS were for "top end" items, so combining that with high prices of the time means that the appraisals reflected the booming antiques market.

Then, of course, along came 2008 and the great economic crash. Many parts of the American economy were hurt by this, including antiques. In most cases, the purchase of an antique is a luxury or discretionary purchase, and this was the type of purchase that was most hurt after 2008. Auction and retail sales in antiques slowed dramatically. Auction prices dropped quickly, but this did not lead to an immediate drop in retail prices. Many dealers tried to hang on to the "old" pricing structure, though they were certainly much more amenable to giving a discount. Over time, however, it did definitely lead to a lowering of many prices in the antiques world. I would say that by about 2010-12, a pricing structure for antiques had become pretty standard.

In the last few years, in some areas of the antiques market, there has been some rise in prices, though we certainly have not reached the hey-day of 1999. People are much more likely to spend their discretionary dollars on things like antiques, so we have come out of the really dark days of 2008-2010. The market, though, is quite different. Few prices are reaching new heights, and some areas of antiques which used to be "hot" are no longer so.

I think probably the biggest reason for that is the lack of serious collectors. Back when the Birmingham appraisals were filmed, there were lots of collectors--some long-term, some new collectors--seeking out the best items in many areas of antiques. In my field, collectors of the best natural history prints, prints of Native Americans, Currier & Ives lithographs, and maps were steadily driving prices to new heights. The economic disaster of 2008 knocked most of these collectors out of the market, and frankly, few have come back in even a decade later.

Why is that? I suspect that some of it was that the most of the long-term collectors were not that young, and after they stopped collecting in 2008, they just never had the enthusiasm to restart. It is one thing to gear up for collecting when one is 30 or 40, but another thing when one is 60-70. Adding to the problem is the fact that there just are not that many young collectors entering the market. Whether that is a product of changing interior design styles, a lack of appreciation of "things," or just lack of education about antiques, everyone in the antiques world will tell you that there are not many millennials or other young people purchasing antiques.

Do I think prices will come back? I think eventually for the best of all types of antiques. Antiques are wonderful artifacts of our past which still can play a relevant role in our lives, even if just as furniture, decoration or whatever. If one looks at the prices for a really well-made antique compared to a mass produced modern equivalent, the antiques are often better value just as objects. When one factors in their history and scarcity, they have a huge appeal. Markets do tend to go up and down and I think the antiques market will go back up. How soon, I wish I knew. The continued popularity of Antiques Roadshow, however, is a hopeful sign.

Price ranges within series of prints

About two centuries ago, Thomas McKenney, the head of the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs, began to commission portraits of Native Americans both when they visited Washington D.C. and from artists “in the field.” McKenney realized that the “progress” of American culture threatened to wipe out the Indian cultures and he felt it was important to document the individuals and their culture for posterity.

When he left office in 1830, McKenney decided to try to produce a portfolio of lithographs based on the paintings he had gather for the government. He borrowed the paintings, had copies made, and then arranged for the production of the images as hand colored lithographs. After many years of battling poverty, politicians and printers, a portfolio, History of the Indian Tribes of North America, was published with 117 portraits and three scenes (actually 118 portrait prints were produced, but one was never included in the portfolio).

The portraits were all based on life paintings, showing many of the Native America chief from around the country, as well as some lesser individuals and women. These paintings provided an incredibly important documentation of Americans from the period, showing not only their faces, but also their dress and accouterments. Although McKenney was acutely aware that he was preserving a chapter in history, he could not have known that had he not undertaken this project, no record at all would remain, for in 1865, a fire at the Smithsonian destroyed almost all the original paintings from which the lithographs were drawn.

In any case, the prints from McKenney's portfolio all share the same history, they have the same relevance to our past, they are all the same size, and they were done by the same printers and lithographers. However, they sell for a wide range of prices. The most expensive prints in this series sell for over $3,000, whereas there are a number that are generally priced at $300 or less. We had a client in the shop the other day, and he was quite puzzled why there was such a range of prices (of course, he liked the more expensive ones and wanted them to be priced closer to the cost of the less expensive ones).

Thus it seemed that a blog explaining why there was such a variation in prices for the prints within one series would be useful, for this type of variation occurs with lots of different series of prints, not just the McKenney portraits. It happens with most natural history prints, and probably the extreme example are the first edition, Audubon bird prints. Some of the prints from that series sell for over $100,000, which others sell for just a few thousand dollars!

The bottom line is that there is often a variation in prices within a single series of prints based purely on desirability of the prints with the public. The prints in one series tend to have equal, general historic value and quality of production, but that doesn’t mean that the public has equal interest in all of them. Sometimes there is a variation in the specific historic import of a particular print (for instance, in general prints of extinct birds sell for more than the ones of birds which are still around today), sometimes there can be prints which have a particular appeal to the public (for instance, prints of dogs and cats tend to be more popular than prints of aardvarks and mice), but the most common reason is appearance.

Within most series, some of the prints are just more visually attractive than others. It can be size (the larger birds from the Audubon series sell for more than the smaller birds), it can be color (a print of a Cardinal will sell for more than a Wren), or it can just be the prettiness of one image compared to the other.

When a print dealer sets prices for the individual prints within a series, he/she will line them up in order of what he/she thinks how their appeal compares to the others. The print market will generally set the value range of a series (so, for instance, first edition Mark Catesby prints will sell for a range between about $7,000 and $700) and each dealer will then assign his/her prints to a place within that range. It is interesting that different dealers will assign different prices to prints depending on their reading of the market, though the ranges for most dealers will be consistent.

This, of course, makes total market sense as the more desirable prints can be sold for more, while one sometimes has to really cut prices on some of the less desirable prints in order to sell them at all. Typically, despite what can be a very large variation in prices, it is the more expensive prints which tend to sell more quickly than the less expensive ones. An interestingly phenomenon is that as dealers get different groups of prints from one series over time, they will sell the more expensive prints, while the lower end tend not to sell, resulting in many dealers have few of the “better” prints, but often multiple copies of the “lesser” prints.

So, how does this play out for the McKenney prints... The most important factor in desirability is the print's appearance. Some of the Indians are spectacular, with strong colors and fierce aspects, while others look like they are refugees from an immigrant camp. Looking at the two prints above, it is not hard to see which would sell for more, and would still be easier to sell at that higher price.

There are two other aspects to the visual premium besides just appearance. There are a few prints in the McKenney series which show full figured Indians, while most are just bust portraits. Being a full figure adds a price premium. Then there is the premium for having regalia or accessories which are of interest. There is only one of the figures with the archetypal full feathered headdress, only one figure with the classic bow & arrow, and a few with interesting weapons, robes or necklaces. All of these are worth more than they would have been without those accouterments.

Two other factors in the valuation of McKenney portraits relate to the history of the particular individual depicted. Some tribes are more desirable than others, for various reasons; there are only two portraits of the romantic Pawnee tribe, the Seminoles and Creeks remain of great interest in the American southeast, and the Iroquois appeal to many in the mid-Atlantic region. Other tribes have much more passed into the historical shadows, such as the Chippewa.

More important is who the individual is, for there are a number of portraits of Native Americans who are of particular interest or importance in American history. Portraits of Pocahontas, Red Jacket, McIntosh, and Black Hawk sell for more because of who they show, not particularly because of their appearance.

So at the top of the price list, one would find a magnificent portrait of a full-figured chief of great importance; that is Osceola. At the other end of the range you will find a rather pathetic portrait of an emaciated chief from a tribe which excites little interest about whom no one knows very much; that is Waemboeshkaa. These prints share a history and quality of production, but it is really not surprising that the one is worth over ten times the other. If you look at our listing of McKenney folio prints in price order, one can see all these factors played out; one might disagree on our particular ranking, but it should make sense.

Appreciating (some) religious prints

I have been in the print and map business for three and a half decades, getting into the business because of my love of history and graphic images of that history. Initially, I focused on early maps—-from the age of exploration-—and historical prints showing scenes of events in the past. Even after all these years, I still love this business and enjoy researching, writing and lecturing about old maps and prints and their place or role in history.

One of the things that amazes me is that I still regularly come across new items which I have either not handled before or which I didn’t even know about. This is always an exciting thing and I will spend days researching and writing up a description of the new item both for my enjoyment and for the edification of our clients.

The latter point is a central policy of my business. Ever since I started The Philadelphia Print Shop with Donald H. Cresswell, our company policy has been to present everything for sale with documentation which places the items in their historic context. We believed in 1982, and I still believe today, that understanding the history of an old map or print is essential for its true appreciation.

One of the things that this approach has done is from time to time to allow me to come to appreciate prints which I used to dismiss as uninteresting. This still happens, as was proved just recently with a new group of prints we got in our shop which I was not even going bother to put on our web site. However, I decided I really should put them up on our web site and so I had better do some research and write them up.

The prints in question are religious prints, a type of print most print dealers, including me, usually dismiss pretty much out of hand. The reason for this is not that print dealers have a prejudice against religious prints, but that i) there are more religious prints than any other kind of prints, ii) most religious prints were done in large numbers without a lot of care for quality, and iii) antique religious prints generally have little market value.

Actually, there is, and has long been, a considerable demand for religious prints by the general public. These prints which hang in many homes around the world. However, that demand means that ever since prints have been made, there have been printmakers creating large numbers of prints to meet that demand. The demand, especially today, is generally not for high quality prints, but rather inexpensive prints with a strong impact. Thus most religious prints are not of the best quality, though there were far more top quality religious prints made in the 18th century.

So, all that explains that when we acquired a group of uncolored engravings of scenes from the bible, I was underwhelmed. That changed, however, when I began to research the prints. These prints are from what is called the “Macklin Bible.” This was a project produced by London print and book publisher, Thomas Macklin between 1792 and 1800.

Macklin decided to produce the largest England Bible ever printed, which took almost a decade and cost about 30,000 pounds! Of particular note is that he decided to include 70 large engravings based on paintings commissioned from a number of important artists, including Philippe Jacques de Loutherbrough, Joshua Reynolds and Benjamin West, and engraved by the best English engravers.

Macklin said the publication was to promote "the glory of the English school' of painting and engraving and 'the interest of our HOLY RELIGION." Macklin died on October 25, 1800, before the Bible was completed, but he did manage to see the last of the engravings, which was finished on October 20th, 1800.

Once I read up on this work, I looked again at the prints, and they came alive for me in a way that my initial, cursory look totally missed. While the subjects are all familiar, the images are special, with each of the artists taking a unique and inspired take on the subject selected. The engraving quality is also superb. I must say I was really surprised, but I actually became engaged with a group of religious prints!

The moral of the story is that almost all old prints and maps are “special” in their own way, and that the only way to truly appreciate them is to study their history and try to understand them in their original context.

Musings on Selling Confederate Prints

We have recently acquired a couple of important historical prints with a Confederate theme: a portrait of Robert E. Lee and an image of a Confederate encampment. Both of these are rare, significant images, the type of prints I have always been proud to handle. However, the recent controversy related to the statues of Confederate “heroes” has given me pause to consider just how pleased I should be to be selling such prints.

Personally, I believe that the statues of Confederate figures should be removed from general public display, where they are presented as glorifications of a cause essentially based on the preservation of slavery, and put into places where they would be presented instead as historic artifacts to be understood as part of our history. That is, where they will be objects which we can learn from rather than glory in.
So, how does this belief relate to my shop selling Confederate prints to the general public? After considerable thought, I believe that it is fine to sell the images, even though they do, in their own way, present aspects or individuals of the Confederacy in a positive light.

To decide this, I looked at what I consider to be the main arguments for removing the Confederate statues from prominent public display.

• The Confederacy was based on the belief of white supremacy, with the aim of maintaining slavery, and this should not be honored by our society or members of our society.
• The statues are sanitized symbols of a horrible part of our nation’s history and to place them in an honored, public space ignores the evil which the Confederacy embodied.
• While the Confederacy is a part of our nation’s history and we should not try to “erase history,” the statues are a glorification of this loathsome part of that history, not simply a recognition of its existence.
• In almost all cases, the statues were created and erected specifically to venerate the Confederacy and to promote its concept of white supremacy. The majority were built not just after the Civil War—when most monuments related to the war were memorials to individuals—but between the 1890s and the 1950s, erected specifically in response to Reconstruction and the Civil Rights movement.

So, how do these arguments apply or not apply to prints of the Confederacy? There are many prints which present a negative view of the Confederacy, and these are not at issue. The prints which are at issue are those which present aspects or figures of the Confederacy in a positive light.

Most of these prints have their genesis in the notion of “The Lost Cause of the Confederacy.” This was a conception, which appeared soon after the war, based on a wishful reimagining of the history of the Civil War in order to vindicate the actions of the Confederacy and restore some sense of pride to Southerners. The “Lost Cause” model presented the Confederate cause as a heroic one, where overwhelming odds led to the defeat of a noble South. The war was presented as a struggle to maintain the Southern way of life, which was more Christian and civilized than the greedy Northern life-style.

Part of the “Lost Cause” idea was a denial of the significance and horror of slavery. Slavery was not supposed to be central to the Confederate cause, and it was often presented as a relatively benign institution. The prints issued as part of the “Lost Cause” idea were published not as a reaction against civil rights and equality of the races, but rather an avoidance of those issues totally in an attempt to reestablish a sense of pride in a culture which had suffered abject defeat.

A great example of the “Lost Cause” concept is William D Washington’s image of the “Burial of Latane.” This painting, and the print based on it, show the burial of Captain William Latane, who was killed while on a raid with J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry. In the image of Latane’s burial there is a stark absence of any men; the burial party is composed solely of women, children and “faithful” slaves, celebrating both the devotion of Southern women and their bond with the slaves. This print was issued in 1868 and would have hung in many Southern homes, allowing the population there to retain some sense of pride in their history and culture.

The print of the Confederate encampment by Conrad Wise Chapman had a similar role. Chapman, a sergeant in the Confederate army, made many sketches of his experiences in the war, including one upon which this print was based. It clearly expresses aspects of the “Lost Cause” concept, with the proud Southern soldiers going around with bare feet, while several blacks are shown happily at leisure, even while the soldiers cook or otherwise work, a highly unlikely state of affairs.
One can look at these prints not as glorifications of slavery and white supremacy, as are the statues, but rather as unfortunate attempts at Southern self-respect. The claim has been made that this is the case also for the statues, but that just is not true. A look at the history of their erection makes it clear that the original intent of the statues was to glorify the Confederacy and promote its defense of white supremacy.

However, I do not think that the original intent is the essential difference between the statues and the prints. That, I think, lies instead in the way the present impact of the prints, compared to the present impact of the statues. I do not think that all, or even most, of the citizens in the communities where the statues now stand would endorse white supremacy, but given their history and their prominent locations, where they loom over public spaces, these statues silently yet expressively make a statement that can and is read by members of those communities as an endorsement of that abhorrent position.
The prints, in contrast, are almost exclusively used in a private or an academic setting, where the reasons for their display can be understood benignly, and where there is no similar deleterious public impact like that of the statues. Now I am sure that there were instances where Confederate images were put on display in a court house or other public location, where they were intended to have an impact similar to the statues. If such a situation exists today, for instance with a portrait of a proud General Lee hanging in a court house, I think that is a situation which does mirror that of the statutes and the portrait should be removed.

However, most of the uses of Confederate prints are in private homes, collections, or in museums and libraries, where they do not have a general public impact. If a Confederate statue is placed in a similar setting, for instance if someone has a statue of Lee in a private home, perhaps because an ancestor fought under the general, I would argue that there is nothing wrong with that. Indeed, I think having the statues on display in a historic setting, say in a museum, is important, for it would be a mistake to ignore our history, and it is important to understand our past in all its complexity.

I would like to say that owning Confederate images is ok as long as one’s intent is “pure,” that is, as long as one is not intending to promote the odious aims of the Confederacy, but instead where one is treating the images as artifacts, part of the multifaceted fabric of our history. However, it is an impossible and probably incoherent to try to judge the intent of a buyer (though if I knew that a potential buyer was intending to use a print to promote white supremacy I would not sell it to that person).

In the end, however, I think the original and current use of prints is quite different than the original intent and current effect of the statutes, and I do think that they are important artifact of our past (the statues too are important artifacts of our past, just ones that should not hold places of public honor), so it is ok for our shop to be selling them.

Itinerary Maps

I have always loved maps of all sorts. As a kid I studied maps in books and magazines, poured over automobile maps from gas stations, and then when I realized that one could actually get hold of them, became entranced by antique maps. Back in the sixties, when my family would go on a road trip, we would use the famous AAA “triptiks.” I would love to follow along the routes, noting the intersections and sites that appeared on either side of the route we were following.

The triptiks are a good example of itinerary or directional map. That is a map the primary concern of which is to follow an itinerary or route from point A to point B, noting the places, rivers, bridges, intersections one would come across in following that route, but not showing anything further afield than what one might see along the way.

These maps are in contrast to “area” maps, which show cartographic information for an entire area—-usually rectangular but sometimes circular—-without predetermining a starting or ending point, nor a route to take (though one can, of course, draw a route onto an area map).

[ Facsimile part of the Peutinger Table centered on Rome ]

The earliest directional map I know of is the famous “Peutinger Table.” In the late first century B.C., Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa produced a road survey and map of the world for Emperor Augustus. None of the original maps has survived, but a later version was found near the end of the fifteenth century and eventually found its way into the library of Konrad Peutinger (fl. 1508-47). Though that map is now lost, copies of various cartographers and modern facsimiles have been made.

[ Detail of facsimile of area around Rome, with roads in yellow ]

The Peutinger Tables consist of eight sections depicting the world along the primary roads of the Roman Empire. The area shown extends from the southeast corner of England—part of the first section showing the rest of Britain having been lost—to Ceylon, the eastern edge of the known world. Reflecting its source in Agrippa’s road survey, the map is drawn around the roads, which are laid out in a schematic fashion—not dissimilar to the way the lines are laid out on the famous tube map of London—though here the roads are put down mostly in a horizontal direction, creating a map that is essentially a long, narrow strip. The Roman roads are given in detail, each notched to indicate a day’s march, with the places and camps one would come to if traveling on those roads. Really, very similar in intent and execution to a triptik.

The notion of itinerary map appeared again in the middle of the thirteenth century in the work of Benedictine month Matthew Paris. Paris worked in the monastery of St. Albans and he was one of the greatest mapmakers of the medieval period. He produced maps of England, Palestine, and itinerary maps for the Pilgrim route to the Holy Land. Written itineraries for pilgrims were well known in the Middle Ages, and they contained descriptions of what one would find along a pilgrimage route. Paris went further and presented much of this information in map form, showing the route from England to Apulia, each day’s journey marked out and important topographical and social features noted along the way. As an aside, the cartographers for a number of the area maps produced in the medieval period, such as the Hereford world map, used written itineraries to create the maps, though presenting them in an area rather than itinerary format.

The next examples of directional maps are the strip maps issued by John Ogilby in his Brtiannia of 1675-76. Ogilby (1600-1676), one of the more colorful figures associated with cartography, started life as a dancing master and finished as the King’s Cosmographer and Geographic Printer. In the course of an eventful life he built a theater in Dublin, became the Deputy Master of Revels in Ireland, translated various Greek and Latin works and founded a book publishing business. In the process he twice lost all he possessed, first in a shipwreck during the English Civil Wars and then in the Great Fire of London. Even this disaster he turned to advantage by being appointed to a Commission of Survey following the fire.

After the fire, Ogilby organized a survey of all the main post roads in the country, and then published a road atlas, Britannia. In this atlas, the maps were engraved in strip form, essentially like a series of triptik pages put next to each other on the same sheet. The maps give details of the roads themselves and descriptive notes of the country on either side. Intersections of other roads are indicated and each strip has a compass rose to indicate changes in direction. Topography is shown using the molehill style, and uphill or downhill is illustrated by inverting the picture of a grade on the page. A number of other publishers later followed the Ogilby model, which was particularly popular in Great Britain.

[ One of four sections of Simpson map ]

Another place one finds itinerary maps is from explorers, who would make maps they surveyed along their routes. These surveys would often be amalgamated into area maps, but they also were sometimes issued as itinerary maps. James Hervey Simpson mapped a route from Fort Smith, Arkansas to Santa Fe, producing a map in 1849 which was intended as a wagon road itinerary map for emigrants and traders.

[ One of seven sections of Preuss map ]

Another example of that is the seven sheet map drawn by Charles Preuss based on the surveys and notes made during John Frémont’s expedition along the Oregon Trail in 1842-43. These maps were combined into the Preuss/Frémont map of 1845, but the seven sheets were very much in the tradition of an itinerary map intended for use by the many emigrants along the Oregon Trail, as well as 49’s heading off to the gold fields of California.

In the twentieth century, AAA was not the only firm to produce itinerary maps, though their triptiks were by far the most commonly used. Today, in the twentieth century, itinerary maps are even more common, though now they are not on paper, but rather appear as ephemeral digital maps on car dash boards and on smart phones. Google maps and Waze both are programs which produce itinerary maps in a modern and incredibly detailed form.

On a personal note, though I still love maps in all different formats, I am a bit sad to see the relative demise of the use of area maps. So many people use the digital directional maps, that area maps—especially printed ones—have become almost obsolete. This is a shame, as while one can follow a route most easily using an itinerary map, area maps put those routes into a wider context. They also allow one more easily to stray from the planned itinerary—either physically or just mentally—and the loss of that is I think a sad one.

Presidential Prints

January 20th, 2017 is a somber day, when the United States inaugurates its 58th president, Donald J. Trump. Whatever your political outlook, this is an important event, placing a new occupant in to what is often called the most powerful office in the world. Mr. Trump will enter into a small brotherhood (still) of individuals, the membership of which has ranged from those who rose to the occasion to reach greatness, and those whose tenure has blessedly passed. It is helpful to look at this mixed cast of characters to put Trump’s inauguration into perspective.

One of the great things about antique historical prints is that they give us a unique view of how people in the past viewed their own time. Prints reflected the opinions of their makers, but as they were usually produced with the intent of either influencing public opinion or at least making money by fitting the public’s opinions enough to sell well, they also often reflect popular attitudes towards their subjects. This is, naturally, very true of prints of American presidents.

Historic prints of American presidents are quite interesting. They started, of course, with prints of George Washington. Washington was almost universally respected as a moral and military figure right from the beginning, so most contemporary portraits show him in a noble pose.

Sacred to the Memory of Washington
When Washington died, the nation mourned deeply and contemporary prints were issued showing the sorrow of the country,

Apotheosis of Washington
and others showed Washington rising to heaven to his place of immortality.

Middleton portrait of Lincoln
After his assassination, Abraham Lincoln achieved a similar heroic place in the nation’s heart, which led to the production of many, many noble portraits of Lincoln which hung in thousands of homes around the country. A good example of this are the portraits of Lincoln issued by E.C. Middleton, about which I wrote in an earlier blog.

Currier & Ives of Washington & Lincoln
One way that printmakers showed Lincoln’s character as one of the “great” presidents was to associate him with the clearly “great” George Washington. Currier & Ives issued this fun print showing the two presidents shaking hands,

while other prints depicted Washington welcoming Lincoln to heaven.

Family Monument of Our Country
By being inaugurated into the nation’s top office, each president achieves at least the status of membership in this august body and this is shown in the many prints which show all the presidents together. The importance of these men (still) was often emphasized by a prominent depiction of the noble Washington, standing, as it were, at the head of this fellowship.


It will be interesting to see how our newest president will be treated by contemporary prints and those in the future...