An extremely rare broadsheet printing of the Constitution - photo 1
An extremely rare broadsheet printing of the Constitution - photo 2

An extremely rare broadsheet printing of the Constitution

Lot 118
17.01.2024 11:00UTC -05:00
Classic
Starting price
$ 200 000
AuctioneerCHRISTIE'S
Event locationUSA, New York
Archive
The auction is completed. No bids can be placed anymore.
Archive
ID 1119110
Lot 118 | An extremely rare broadsheet printing of the Constitution
Estimate value
$ 200 000 – 300 000
An extremely rare broadsheet printing of the Constitution

September or October 1787

UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION – Proceedings of the Federal Convention. We, the People of the United States. in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, secure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. [n.p., c. September-October 1787.]



An almost unique contemporary broadsheet edition of the Constitution. It includes the text of all seven articles, plus the Congressional act submitting the Constitution for ratification by the state conventions, signed in type by George Washington as President of the Constitutional Convention. Not in Evans, Sabin or any of the standard bibliographical sources. We are aware of only one other copy of this printing, which is without imprint or other indication of its place of printing (that copy sold in these rooms, 15 December 2005, lot 222).



Immediately following the adoption of the newly drafted Constitution on 17 September 1787, the full text was prepared for general dissemination. The official printers to the Convention, Dunlap and Claypoole, working in the late afternoon and early evening, set the text in type, together with the accompanying resolutions of the Convention and letter to Congress, and then printed an unknown number of copies. In addition, the printers prepared a special issue of the Pennsylvania Packet containing the same text. "Newspapers throughout the United States soon printed the Constitution in special issues, handbills and pamphlets" (Bernstein, Are We to be a Nation?, p. 186). The rapidity with which the text was disseminated may be seen in the separate imprints listed in Evans and elsewhere. "Printers all over America...followed on during the next two weeks, several of them publishing special editions to inform, comfort or shock their readers. Delegates sent off copies in every direction...and by early November it was a lonely or uncaring American, whether a merchant in Paris or a trapper in the Kickapoo country, who had not read the proposed Constitution" (C. Rossiter, 1787: The Grand Convention, pp.257-258).



Folio broadsheet, 427 x 270mm with one-line heading in large type, text in four columns, the sheet untrimmed, with original deckle edges preserved, contemporary marginalia, (minor losses along folds mended with thread and reinforced with archival tissue on verso, mild dampstains, light soiling). Provenance: Sotheby's New York, 13 December 2000, lot 209.

Address of auction CHRISTIE'S
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