Louis Prang, "Father of the American Christmas Card"

Louis Prang, a German immigrant to Boston in the early 1850s, is known as the “Father of the American Christmas Card,” and most notably brought art into the American home as well as the public classroom by way of chromolithographs and school art supplies. He was born in Germany in 1824 and was one of several children. Due to his persistent ill health at a young age, which prevented him from attending school and obtaining a formal education, he accompanied and was apprenticed to his father, Jonas Louis Prang, a French Huguenot, designing, engraving, printing, and dying various mediums from the age of 13 to 18 years old. Perhaps due to his political views, Prang was forced to leave his country and travel throughout Europe. On Nov. 1, 1851, he married Rosa Gerber, a Swiss woman he had met during his travels, in Boston. “Bouquet of Roses,” one of the first chromolithographic prints he created, was fashioned in her honor.

It was the American public’s fascination with Civil War territory disputes, battles and troop movements coupled with the lack of newspapers’ ability to print photographic images which provided Prang with a unique opportunity to put his skills to use. He manufactured some of the first mass produced maps with red and blue lines, which illustrated troop movements and positions of opposing forces on the battlefields. It allowed those on the home-front to track troop advances and retreats through victories and defeats throughout the war. By 1864, the soaring popularity of these maps provided Prang with enough money to travel with his wife and daughter to Europe. Around 1864, he took the concept of well wishing cards from the 1840s and published a series of Christmas themed prints, intended to decorate private dwellings. At the suggestion of a London colleague’s wife in the 1870s, Prang omitted the names and addresses on his popular trade cards and instead inserted seasonal greetings, thus creating the modern Christmas card. The end of the Civil War and Prang’s return to the United States set in motion his efforts to produce commercial art prints replicating the high quality of European art at a semi-affordable price, yet he was unsure of American acceptance and reaction to finer and more expensive art at about $6.00 a print. He produced his first chromolithograph, which he dubbed as “chromos,” in 1866. They were cheaper yet high quality reproductions of original oil paintings he had admired elsewhere. Culture purists and opponents labeled Prang’s reproductions as “frauds” and “shams.” Despite his critics, he won a host of awards on the international scale for his work. In 1898, tragedy struck as his wife, Rosa Gerber Prang, passed away. On April 15, 1900, Louis Prang married long time business associate, Mary Dana Hicks, and the two remained happily married until Louis Prang’s death in 1909 at a California sanitarium. He had been an outspoken advocate for bringing art, previously enjoyed only by the privileged few, into the classroom through the introduction of products like watercolor paints, which immortalized his name for generations of schoolchildren. The Prang Educational Company oversaw these efforts, which were taken on by American Crayon Company upon the merger of the two.

The American Crayon Company

The American Crayon Company, steeped in Sandusky’s colorful history as one of the premier and foremost manufacturers of school art supplies and other industrial products in the nation during its time, originally grew out of the need for a high quality chalk. It soon branched out of a humble kitchen into a national company primarily operated and concentrated in the city of Sandusky. It expanded over time by merging with and absorbing other companies and redirecting its product line focus, and also established itself as a lifetime employer of countless Sanduskians. With the acquisition of Prang’s Educational Company around 1915, the American Crayon Company adopted and incorporated Prang Educational Company’s mission to make art accessible to the common American household and child by way of the public classroom, thus cementing its historical impact on a local and national scale.

In 1835, Dr. Francis F. Field, a dentist in Waltham, Massachusetts experimented with chalk, which was later developed into a commercial product by Parmenter, Powell & Powers Company to become known as Waltham Crayons. Similarly, Marcellus F. Cowdery, the first superintendent of Sandusky’s Public Schools, frustrated by existing chalks constantly scratching slate boards, encouraged his brother-in-law, William D. Curtis, to formulate an improved chalk. In the 1860s Curtis began conducting experiments in the kitchen of his small home, located on Hayes Avenue near Polk Street and was able to create a few sticks of pure white, processed chalk. Plentiful gypsum and limestone deposits, used in the production of this chalk, were conveniently located nearby, alongside Sandusky Bay. Initially, the business remained small and was operated out of Curtis’s kitchen, as he peddled the product from house to house. The invitation of John S. Cowdery, Marcellus’s brother into this new business venture, sparked company growth, as by 1869, John Cowdery’s cellar on Columbus Avenue became the center of operations for chalk production for the Mississippi and Ohio River Valley markets. By the late 1860s, the American Crayon Company had made the first tailor’s chalk, the first carpenter’s chalk, and in 1878 created the first railroad chalk. Originally labeled as the J.S. Cowdery Manufacturers the company quickly renamed itself Western School Supply in 1884 after expanding production facilities in 1881 near Hayes Avenue and Polk Street to meet the growing demands for school related products.

In 1890, the Sandusky based Western School Supply Company merged with Tiffin Crayon Company and the Parmenter Crayon Company in Waltham, Massachusetts to officially form and establish the American Crayon Company. On October 4, 1901, a fire destroyed the company’s original Sandusky plant, and a larger one on Hayes Avenue south of the New York Central Railroad tracks was opened in September 1902. The revitalized company began purchasing additional art supply companies in New England and the Midwest.

World War I interrupted commercial trade between many nations including the United States and Germany. Prang’s heavy reliance on German chemicals and products to manufacture its own items was impeded by decreased availability before and during World War I. These circumstances pushed Prang Educational Company and American Crayon Company into a merger in 1913. The combined companies organized their own small independent watercolor factory in Sandusky called Kroma Color Company. American Crayon Company’s complete take- over of the Prang Educational Company around 1915 gave them the rights to use the unmistakable “Prang” trademark of the “Old Faithful” geyser at Yellowstone National Park as their advertising logo symbolizing quality, value, and tradition. The American Crayon Company manufactured a long line of crayons, chalks, blackboards, erasers, watercolors, pencils, paste, cleaners, and other more industrial items, such as chalk for tailors, carpenters, textile mills, and railroad stockyards. The growing success and popularity of the American Crayon Company led to its prosperous operation at the original Sandusky plant through the 1920s to the 1950s.

In January 1957, the American Crayon Company became an affiliate of Joseph Dixon Crucible Company, based in Jersey City, New Jersey. The news was followed by high hopes and promises to continue labor operations in Sandusky and deter little from the existing set up. The unpredictable nature of business and changing economy led to the Bryn Mawr Corporation’s 1984 purchase of American Crayon’s parent company, Joseph Dixon Crucible. Dixon Ticonderoga, established much earlier than American Crayon Company, produced similar products but tended to focus more on industrial supplies. Although predictions and negotiations continued and were meant to reassure the ongoing operation of the Sandusky plant following its acquisition, gradually labor and plant operations along with a host of selected employees were outsourced to Canada and Mexico. Eventually, all the operations were progressively moved out of the original Sandusky plant, and it closed its doors in 2002 after 167 years of service in Sandusky, Ohio as a loyal and long-term employer in the community. American Crayon Company opened a new world of art to young children and provided a major source of employment for the local community, earning itself an important place in Sandusky’s history of development and business.