Visualizing 19th-Century New York Digital Publication

Because limestone was, and still is, a precious resource for lithographers, most of Currier & Ives’s printing stones were reground and reused when the firm was liquidated in 1907. However, a handful of stones, including this one representing the firm’s popular clipper ship genre of the mid-nineteenth century, have survived to this day and serve as reminders of the manual labor behind each lithograph. For further explanation of the lithography process, see Behind the Scenes.

—Kirstin Purtich