1887 Our National Game
DESCRIPTION
This is a complete set of six original color lithographs from Our National Game, published in 1887 by Liebenroth, Von Auw & Co.. The prints were issued as part of a juvenile scrapbook intended to illustrate and explain the rules and situations of baseball at a time when the sport had become firmly established across the United States.
The set includes the title plate, depicting a posed baseball team beneath patriotic motifs, and five action scenes titled Fly Ball, Foul Ball, Wild Pitch, Home Run, and Caught Between Bases. Each scene presents a specific moment of play, showing period uniforms, equipment, field layout, and umpiring conventions consistent with late nineteenth-century baseball. The images function both as visual instruction and as documentation of how the game was played and presented to the public during this period.
The prints were produced using chromolithography, resulting in soft but well-defined color, with careful attention to figures, gestures, and spatial relationships on the field. They were originally intended to be pasted into an album, which accounts for why many surviving examples show edge wear or are encountered as individual sheets rather than intact groupings.
Complete sets are uncommon. Most surviving material from Our National Game appears as single plates or partial groupings, often missing either the title plate or one of the action scenes. This set retains all six issued images, allowing the series to be viewed as it was originally conceived and published in 1887.
Liebenroth, Von Auw & Co. was a New York City–based lithographic and publishing firm active in the late nineteenth century, best known for producing illustrated scrapbooks, educational prints, and popular visual material for a broad American audience. Operating during the height of chromolithography’s commercial use, the firm specialized in colorful, accessible imagery tied to recreation, instruction, and contemporary culture, including sports, civic themes, and juvenile publications.
CONDITION
1200 W. 35th Street #425 Chicago, IL 60609 | P: (312) 496 - 3622