[Partially printed Stock Certificate Designed and Printed by Grafton Tyler Brown]: Peoples Ice Company

San Francisco: Litho. G.T. Brown & Co., 1870[s].

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Unbound. Original partially printed stock certificate completed in ink holograph for the Peoples Ice Company of San Francisco dated 1875 and signed by company officers. Single sheet. Lithographed. Measures 9" x 4¼". Printed on recto only, illustrated with an engraved vignette of a factory building and a train locomotive in the background in a rural setting sited next to a river and with a pictorial border consisting of a frozen rope motif. Slightly trimmed left margin causing light loss to printed border, folded once vertically and with one small die-cut star at President's signature to indicate redemption of the certificate.

Printed by noted African-American Grafton Tyler Brown, publisher, printer, surveyor, lithographer, and artist born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1841, the son of a formerly enslaved woman who was involved in the abolitionist movement. He began as a printer’s assistant in Philadelphia at the age of 14, where he learned lithography. By 1861 he had moved to San Francisco and joined the lithography firm of Kuchel and Dresel, where he produced maps and views of California cities and mining towns. He purchased the business in 1867, and renamed it G.T. Brown and Co. He is the earliest acknowledged African-American artist to paint landscapes of the Pacific Northwest and California.


Item #499631

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Item #499631 [Partially printed Stock Certificate Designed and Printed by Grafton Tyler Brown]: Peoples Ice Company. Grafton Tyler BROWN.