The firm F. W. Niven was established in Ballarat by Francis Wilson Niven. Niven was an unsuccesful digger who bought a small lithographic plant around 1855 from a printer named Alfred Ronalds in Ballarat and began printing scenes of the diggings with drawings he made on lithographic stones. Niven produced illustrations for the first issues of the Ballarat Punch on this equipment in 1855. Niven joined the printer H. Deutsch in Bridge Street, Ballarat, around 1857, and in 1858 bought the business. He commenced printing as F. W Niven in 1863, began letterpress printing in 1866, and in 1873 bought a modern steam lithography machine, establishing the Ballarat Steam Lithography Printing Office at 34 Sturt Street. F. W. Niven employed about 70 staff by the 1890s, and was the largest printing company in Ballarat.
F. W. Niven and Co. was best known for its pictorial and ornamental work, in early years based on the work of the founder, a skilled artist and photographer. An early printer of photolithography and chromolithography, the company was at the forefront of the development of pictorial printing in Victoria. Francis Niven and his son Henry invented the Crisp Photo process, a new type of collotype printing which allowed a great advance in the clarity of photographs printed in publications. Henry Ninian Niven joined his father in the business and in the 1890s it opened a branch in Flinders Street, Melbourne, where it used 'machinery of the latest and best type known in the printing world'.
H. N. Niven continued the business after his father's death in 1905, and in the 1930s Richard Harvey and Henry Alfred Siminton each bought a third share. After Henry Niven died his son Wilson Niven continued the Niven family interest. Siminton bought Harvey out, and when the business ceased trading in 1983, it was fully owned and managed by Peter and Bob Siminton.
