Books and Manuscripts

No place, first half 19th-century. Sepia-toned cotton handkerchief. Forty-eight facsimile signatures printed at bottom; each signature numbered to correspond with a portrait key printed above it, identifying each individual. Approximately 29 1/2 x 32 1/2 in. (749 x 825 mm). Edges worn, small tears in corners; large stain extending across most of image; dampstaining in bottom left corner; a few scattered stains at top. In frame, 30 1/2 x 33 in. (775 x 838 mm). Threads of History 418

A scarce large sepia-toned print on cotton depicting John Trumbull's famous 1818 painting of the five-man drafting committee's presentation of the first draft of the Declaration of Independence to the Second Continental Congress, on June 28, 1776. This handkerchief printing is a composite image based on American painter Asher B. Durand's 1820-23 engraving of Trumbull's painting, and features Durand's printed key identifying each signer that was originally issued on a separate sheet. Historian and author Herbert Ridgeway Collins in his Threads of History dates this textile to 1876 to correspond to the United States's centennial celebration (Smithsonian Press, 1978, p. 200, item 418), but others have recently dated it earlier. If so, it is possible it was created to correspond with the hanging of Trumbull's painting in the Rotunda of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. in 1826 during the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence.