The company was founded in 1896 by Herbert Huse Bigelow and Hiram Brown.
On June 24, 1924, Bigelow was convicted for tax evasion, fined ten thousand dollars, and sentenced to three years in Leavenworth Penitentiary.[1] He was released after eight months. While incarcerated, he befriended infamous safe-crackerMorris Rudensky.[2]
On April 13, 1928, President Calvin Coolidge pardoned Bigelow.[3] Following Bigelow's release, the company became notable for developing prototype convict rehabilitation programs through the hiring of hundreds of ex-convicts.[4]
In 1925 Brown & Bigelow (B&B) inaugurated a tradition of publishing calendars for the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). The first was illustrated with a work by Norman Rockwell, which had previously published as the cover of The Red Cross Magazine. Rockwell was commissioned by the BSA and B&B to create an annual painting featured on each year's calendar; his works were featured from 1926 to 1976. He missed only two years early in the series.[5]
In 1936 B&B's president Charlie Ward paid ten thousand dollars to artist Maxfield Parrish for exclusive rights to his work Peaceful Valley.[6] By the late 1940s, the company was one of the largest printers of calendars in the world.[7] It employed some of the best pin-up artists in the United States and sold calendars to an estimated fifty million homes.[8]
Rockwell agreed to paint a self-portrait for the 1969 edition of the Boy Scouts of America calendar; it was a tribute to his seventy-fifth birthday.[5]
At one point, Brown & Bigelow originally produced the Hoyle line of playing cards, in 1927. The Hoyle brand became so popular that the B&B group eventually printed all cards under the Hoyle name. All Hoyle brand playing cards (including the "Shell Back", Maverick, and Delta series cards) were acquired from B&B in a 2001 trade deal by the United States Playing Card Company.
