Curt Teich


Curt Otto Teich was an American publisher of German descent who produced popular color postcards, primarily of scenes from American life. He was a pioneer of the offset printing process. Under his management, the Curt Teich & Company became the world's largest printer of view and advertising postcards.

Life

Teich was born in Greiz, Thuringia, and, following his family's traditional career as printers and publishers, worked as a printer's apprentice in Lobenstein. He immigrated to the United States in 1895, where he initially worked as a printer's devil in New York, a much lower position than he had held in Germany.
Teich moved to Chicago, Illinois, and started his own firm—Curt Teich & Company—in January 1898.
Teich is best known for its "Greetings From" postcards with their big letters, vivid colors, and bold style. "Greetings From" postcards had originated in Germany in the 1890s, and Teich successfully imported the style to the American market after a visit in 1904. Teich employed hundreds of traveling salesmen, who sold picture postcards to domestic residences, and encouraged business to create advertising postcards; these salesmen also photographed the businesses and worked with the owners to create an idealized image.
The company closed in 1978. The Teich family donated archives of the company to the Lake County Discovery Museum in Illinois which started the Curt Teich Postcard Archive. In 2016, it was announced that the archives would be transferred to the Newberry Library. Altogether, the Newberry Library received approximately 2.5 million total items including near 500,000 postcard images. On April 3, 2017, the Curt Teich Postcard Archives Collection was opened to researchers.