Nathaniel Currier, born Roxbury, MA - American Feathered Game-Partridges - ca. 1854 - T-Shirt

This design reproduces Nathaniel Currier's hand-coloured lithograph American Feathered Game-Partridges, printed around 1854, in which two partridges hang by their feet against a plain field of cream.

Visual Elements & Composition

Cream dominates the print, with slate blue, brown, grey and rust appearing in smaller passages across the birds' plumage. The sheet is vertical, and the two birds are arranged to fill it, their ruffed grouse feathers rendered in fine, deliberate detail. The lettering sits within the composition: AMERICAN FEATHERED GAME. PARTRIDGES. at the head, and NEW YORK, PUBLISHED BY N. CURRIER, 152 NASSAU STREET beneath.

Meaning & Symbolism

Game birds stood for the bounty of the American wilderness, and for sporting pursuits that had become a respectable way to spend time outdoors. Prints like this one spoke to a public who saw fields and woodlands as a national resource and the rural life around them as a point of pride. Currier ran his highly successful lithographic firm in New York City, producing affordable images of American life, history and landscape for a growing middle class. This print comes from that firm, before his partnership with James Merritt Ives.

On the Tee

The print was designed to be held close and studied, and a chest-level front suits that. Worn, the vertical composition sits across the wearer's torso, so the birds and the publisher's imprint read as the wearer moves. The cream field keeps the fine plumage lines clear, letting the detail of Currier's original come through.