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The Proclamation at Sotheby’s

A copy of the Irish Proclamation comes up at Sotheby’s sale of English Literature, History, Childrens’ Books and Illustrations in London on July 12. When purchased in 1996 it was mounted on early stiff card.  It was professionally repaired at the Williamstown Art Conservation Centre in Massachusetts and afterwards preserved in a clamshell box. The restoration saw the copy removed from its previous mount, washed, archival backed, newly remounted on thin Japanese paper and encapsulated.  It is estimated at £100,000-150,000.

This is one of a small number of copies printed at Liberty Hall on Easter Sunday 1916, marking the beginning of the Easter Rising. Three men, printer Christopher Brady and two compositors, Michael Molloy and Liam O’Brien handled the printing. The Rising led eventually to the foundation of the Irish Free State and later Irish Republic. Less than 50 copies of the original are thought to have survived.

UPDATE: THIS WAS UNSOLD

A copy of the Proclamation of Independence of the Irish Republic sold for £305,000 at Sotheby’s sale of English Literature, History, Children’s Books and Illustrations in London. It had been estimated at £80,000-120,000.  It is one of a small number of surviving copies printed at Liberty Hall, Dublin on Easter Sunday, 1916.  This marked the beginning of the Easter Rising and inaugurated modern Ireland.  About 1,000 were printed and most of these were destroyed in the storming of Liberty Hall.  It is thought that less than 50 survive.

The text of this document was read from the steps of the General Post Office, Sackville (now O’Connell) Street, Dublin, on Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, by Pádraig Pearse, who, with Thomas J. Clarke, Seán Mac Diarmada, Thomas MacDonagh, Eamonn Ceannt, James Connolly and Joseph Plunkett were the signatories of the Proclamation.