Lithograph, "The Darktown Fire Brigade: Under Full Steam"
date: label: date made
content: ca 1887
name: label: publisher
content: Currier & Ives
notes: label: Description
content: In 1857, Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives became business partners and set out to produce popular, affordable decorative prints for American consumers. In the 1880s, Currier & Ives produced the "Darktown Comics" series of color lithographs, which would become one of their best-selling lines. Each of these depicted African Americans as racist caricatures and ugly stereotypes, and presented scenes where the humor, such as it was, derived from their buffoonish antics and "putting on airs.” These color lithographs were primarily created by John Cameron (1828-1906) and Thomas Worth (1834-1917), two artists employed by Currier & Ives. They drew on a broad visual vocabulary of anti-black racist tropes that had developed over the 19th century, derogatory signifiers that would have been understood and shared by their popular audience, who created a demand for similar imagery in numerous other commercial and decorative objects of the time. Cameron and Worth often set hapless black figures in traditionally white roles, such as firefighting, and the ridiculous failures they depicted helped to reinforce entrenched racial and social hierarchies, as well as to perpetuate the notions of heroism and leadership as white male prerogatives in the period after Reconstruction. When Currier & Ives shut down operations in 1907, New York City printer Joseph Koehler purchased the lithographic stones of the "Darktown Comics" series from the firm and produced restrikes under his own name for several more years.
label: Description
content: This color lithograph – “Under Full Steam” – depicts a fire company attempting to rescue people from a burning house. This print is unusual in showing the firefighters employing a steam fire engine, which were common by the 1880s, particularly in urban areas. “Darktown Fire Brigade” images normally show their stereotyped firefighters using antiquated and rickety hand fire pumpers, to emphasize their racist message that their subjects are backward, inept, and unable to adapt. But the steam fire engine depicted is so woefully inadequate – part of it is made from a wood stove and a tea kettle – that the message is reinforced. Half-naked women and children flee the fire, while a woman climbing down a ladder is hit with spray from the hose. This version is an original lithograph produced by Currier & Ives.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Fire Fighting and Law Enforcement
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of CIGNA Museum and Art Collection
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 2005.0233.1108
label: accession number
content: 2005.0233
label: catalog number
content: 2005.0233.1108
objectType: label: Object Name
content: lithograph
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: lithograph (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 15 in x 17 in; 38.1 cm x 43.18 cm