A textile handkerchief broadside
On cambric, c. 1820
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE – Textile broadside. In Congress July 4, 1776 The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America. [Glasgow: Robert & Collin Gillespie] c. 1821.

An early printing of the Declaration of Independence on a handkerchief. The design is derived chiefly from the 1819 William Woodruff printing of the Declaration, featuring folksy portraits of Washington, Adams and Jefferson as well as the state seals of the thirteen original states. The signatures below the text of the Declaration were derived from the Binns broadside, or possibly from Woodruff's separately printed edition of the facsimile signatures. The printer has added two historical vignettes at bottom including "Patriotic Bostonians discharging the British Ships I Boston harbour” and “General Burgoyne's Surrender to general Gates [at] Saratoga.” Contemporary newspaper accounts described them as "the finest specimens of printing on cambric ever produced," and recommending that American manufacturers should print their "handkerchiefs with such representations of national events, as will serve to perpetuate them, by exciting patriotic feelings, and keeping alive the reembrace of such events" (Baltimore Patriot, 28 May 1821, p. 2). The present example is a variant of two textile broadsides found in Collins, Threads of History, 23 & 58.

Printed in red on cambric, 810 x 700 mm (visible). Laid down on a later board and framed. (Scattered foxing and some toned spots, two small holes.)