Re-Declaration.
N.p., 2026. Item #4301
26 x 36 in. 600 DPI inkjet print on Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308, hand-finished with graphite, with 15 x 21 in. letterpress broadside printed on Crane Lettra paper affixed.
This is an limited-edition artist’s proof print of Drucker’s Re-Declaration, a work that was commissioned for the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence by the American Philosophical Society (where the original is on exhibition).
This piece is one of three hand-finished artist’s proofs; the affixed broadside was produced in an edition of 250 copies. The American Philosophical Society was founded by a printer—Benjamin Franklin. Current member and printer, Johanna Drucker, was invited by the Society to re-imagine the Declaration of Independence in part upon the realization that a key copy of the Declaration—printed in 1777 by Baltimore printer and publisher Mary Katherine Goddard—was not going to be available for a comprehensive 2026 exhibition of the Declaration’s print history. Drucker’s project thus illuminates the contributions of women printers in early America, as well as those practicing today. Her perspective is crucial in this ongoing history; while membership history of the Society includes at least three other printers from 1768, Drucker’s review of records has indicated no women printers/scholars.
Drucker’s Re-Declaration is the result of painstaking study of the print history, typography, and textual variants of numerous copies of the Declaration of Independence, and incorporates elements from John Dunlap’s first broadside printing, as well as a hand-drawn frame in the style of John Binns’ ceremonial steel engraving. For the original drawing of the frame, Drucker hand-calligraphed the script of the document’s heading, and drew each of the state seals along with contemporary flourishes: solar power grids flanking the title, and a “Libertree” replete with all-seeing eyes embedded in its foliage.
The broadside, printed on Carolee Campbell’s (Ninja Press) Vandercook press, adapts the original document into an erasure poem, removing all historically-specific references and the word “king,” to “let the fundamental enduring principles of the Declaration remain.” Drucker signs the broadside “Johanna Hancock,” nodding to the iconic signature styles on copies of the Declaration that continue to permeate American imagination.
In her artist’s statement and history of the project, Drucker writes: “this project draws on all of the experiences I have acquired as a scholar, artist, printer across decades. I am often struck by what my hands know how to do, what my eye can process and translate into design and gesture, how my thought processes have been informed by a life among poets, artists, and intellectuals for whom creative work is a form of applied as well as innovative knowledge.”
Indeed, Re-Declaration is a triumph of a master printer, and a celebration of an American artist’s eye for the typographical and material history of that makes the Declaration of Independence a foundational cultural document.
This is artist’s proof 3/3. Two proofs only are available for sale.
Fine.
Out of Stock