Lithograph, "The Darktown Fire Brigade: The Last Shake"
date: label: date made
content: ca 1907
name: label: publisher
content: Koehler, Joseph
label: copyright
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 – “The Last Shake” – depicts a fire company (“Niagara”) engaged in a contest to throw water high enough to reach a liberty cap atop a pole, but the effort ends in chaos. Their old-fashioned fire pumper is broken, the firefighters are thrown in all directions, and the spectators are running away. It is paired with a second scene entitled “The Last Shake.” The print is a racist parody of the common practice of fire companies in American towns and cities to mark holidays with parades and contests, including pumping challenges. This version is a restrike produced by Joseph Koehler after 1907.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States
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: 2005.0233.1094
label: accession number
content: 2005.0233
label: catalog number
content: 2005.0233.1094
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