Archives West Finding Aid

Curt Teich & Co. dominated the American postcard industry for several decades from the time of its opening in Chicago, Illinois in 1898, sometimes being called “the General Motors of the postcard.”

The company was founded by Curt Teich, a German immigrant who came from a lineage of printers and followed his brother to Chicago in 1877. At the time Teich opened his own printing firm, competition in Chicago was strong among newspapers and magazine printers. In 1904, in an attempt to carve out a niche for himself in the printing market, he returned to his native Germany to learn new techniques for the color printing of landscape views derived from black-and-white photographs. His return to America marked the beginning of Curt Teich & Co.’s postcard specialization. The company’s ability to fill orders quickly, as well as the introduction in 1931 of the linen postcard, was the source of their considerable fame and prosperity. The company operated until 1978, and was considered the world’s largest printer of view and advertising postcards at the time of its closing. The Lake County Discovery Museum in Illinois presently houses the Curt Teich Company Postcard Archives.

Dating Curt Teich & Co. Postcards .

Unlike most postcard manufacturers, accurate dating of cards produced by Curt Teich & Co. is possible from serial numbers printed on the company’s cards and proofs that reflect production years and printing methods. For instance, for the period in which the postcards displayed in these photo tickets were manufactured (from 1908-1928), postcards were numbered from 1-124180 with the most common suffixes of ‘A’ or ‘R.’ A card printed with a ‘P’ preceding the number indicated the Curt Teich’s photochrom process, or C. T. American Art . Complete guides for dating Curt Teich postcards is available on the Lake County Discovery Museum’s website.

Postcard Printing Processes .

By 1907, Curt Teich had mastered the photochrom printing process, dubbed the C. T. American Art process. While visiting Germany in 1904, Curt Teich learned the experimental color printing processes of German printers. The ‘ fotochrom ’ process Teich brought back with him allowed for the company to successfully imitate the delicacy of individually hand-tinted photographs with his postcards, using colorful lithographic washes over halftones. Teich recalled in a family history published in 1958 that the process was so cumbersome that he did not seek a patent.

In 1909, to reduce labor cost, Teich installed a new and fast offset-lithography press that printed four colors over black halftone impressions (derived originally from a black-and-white- photograph), resulting in delicately tinted postcards. Thirty-two postcards were impressed on each sheet, affording Curt Teich to maintain quality and meet high volume demands faster than his competition.

Of the six photo ticket proofs in the collection, the three that date from January of 1912 are marked to be printed in this photochrom process: 4m Ptchm ; the three dating from January of 1911 are marked to be printed in the 5 m Photo-Glazed style. The latter refers to the C.T. Photo Cote process, in which a black and white photograph was utlized in the printing, and a high-gloss coating was subsequently added to provide the appearance of a glossy photo print.

These Curt Teich artifacts are seemingly rare and unusual, since the earliest job packets that were held in the industrial archives of the Curt Teich Company (and subsequently donated to the Lake County Discovery Museum in 1982) dates from 1925.

Spelling of Photochrom .

Variants exist on the spelling of the photocrom photographic printing process. While the present English spelling is photochrome , the spelling utilized by the Library of Congress is photochrom , which reflects historical spelling. Orell Füssli, the Swiss printing company that originated the process in the 1880s, uses the German spelling fotochrom .