By the 1920s all sorts of historical American objects, including furniture, decorative arts, and prints, had become very desirable for collectors. One enthusiast, Adele Colgate of Tuxedo Park, New York, purchased hundreds of Currier & Ives prints. The Colgate Collection's early black and white images, hand-colored prints, and later chromolithographs (printed in color) represent the technical development of 19th-century lithography through the work of this important American publisher. She is said to have maintained a lifelong interest in "dogs, prints, and bridge, in that order." A breeder of show dogs, Colgate specialized in prints of sporting and Western subjects.