Louis Prang

Louis Prang (March 12, 1824 - September 14, 1909) was an American printer, lithographer and publisher.

Youth

Prang was born in Breslau in Prussian Silesia. His father Jonas Louis Prang was a textile manufacturer and of French Huguenot origin. Because of health problems as a boy, Prang was unable to receive much standard schooling and became an apprentice to his father, learning engraving and calico dyeing and printing. In the early 1840s, Prang travelled around Bohemia working in printing and textiles. However, after some travel in Europe, he became involved in revolutionary activities in 1848. Pursued by the Prussian government, he went to Switzerland and in 1850 immigrated to the United States and Boston, Massachusetts.

Early work

Prang's early activities in the U.S. publishing architectural books and making leather goods were not extraordinary successful, and he began to work making wood engravings for illustrations in books. In 1851 he worked for Frank Leslie, art director for Gleason's Magazine, and also later on with John Andrew, an English engraver and printmaker. In 1851, he was married to Rosa Gerber, a Swiss woman he met in 1846 in Paris.

Lithography and career

In 1856, Prang and a partner created a firm, Prang and Mayer, to produce lithographs. The company specialized in prints of buildings and towns in Massachusetts. In 1860, he bought the share of his partner, creating L. Prang and Company and began work in colored printing of advertising and other forms of business materials.Meggs, Philip B. A History of Graphic Design. ©1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p 148 ISBN 0-471-291-98-6] The firm became extraordinarily successful and also became well known for war maps, printed during the American Civil War and distributed by newspapers.

In 1864, Prang went to Europe to learn about cutting-edge German lithography. Returning the next year, Prang began to create high quality reproductions of major art works. Prang also began creating series of popular album cards, advertised to be collected into scrapbooks, showing natural scenes and patriotic symbols. At Christmas 1873, Prang began creating greeting cards for the popular market in England and began selling the Christmas card in America the next year. Therefore, he is sometimes called the "father of the American Christmas card." Prang is also well known for his efforts to improve art education in the United States, publishing instructional books and creating a foundation to train art teachers.

In 1897, L. Prang and Company merged with another company, creating the Taber-Prang Company and moving to Springfield, Massachusetts. Prang died in Los Angeles on vacation in 1909.

References

* Bethany Neubauer. "Prang, Louis"; American National Biography Online Feb. 2000.

External links

* [http://findingaid.winterthur.org/html/HTML_Finding_Aids/COL0201.htm The Winterthur Library] Overview of an archival collection on Louis Prang.