. Louis prang

Louis Prang (March 12, 1824 – September 14, 1909) was an American printer, lithographer and publisher. He is sometimes known as the "father of the American Christmas card".
Contents
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1Youth
2 Early work
3 Lithography and career
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Youth

Prang was born in Breslau in Prussian Silesia. His father Jonas Louis Prang was atextile 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 andcalico 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 in1848. Pursued by the Prussian government, he went to Switzerland and in 1850 emigrated to the United States and Boston, Massachusetts.
[edit] Early work

Prang's early activities in the U.S.publishing architectural books and making leather goods were not extraordinarily successful, and he began to work making wood engravings for illustrations in books. In 1851 he worked for Frank Leslie, artdirector for Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion, and also later on with John Andrew, an English engraver and printmaker. In 1851, he married Rosa Gerber, a Swiss woman he had met in Paris in1846.
[edit] 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.[1] The firm became extraordinarilysuccessful and also became well known for war maps, printed during the American Civil War and distributed by newspapers.
1883 advertisement for L. Prang & Co., digitally restored.

In 1864, Prang...