Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
TWO ORIGINAL COPIES of the 1916 Proclamation are to go under the hammer at a Dublin auction on Sunday.
The documents will be sold by Whyte’s Auctioneers along with other Easter Rising memorabilia, including rare commemorative medals, memorial posters and contemporary correspondence.
The most highly valued of the two sheets has been restored to museum standard and comes with a guiding price of between €150,000 and €250,000.
It was one of fewer than 50 copies published by the Irish Volunteers and Irish Citizen Army on 24 April, 1916, that survived the destruction of the week.
But Whyte’s Auctioneers says the second copy is an even rarer document, having been printed on rebel presses seized by the British forces that entered the shelled Liberty Hall on 26 April.
The soldiers are said to have found the lower half frame of type still in the presses – the Proclamation was printed in two halves – and ran off as many copies as they could before selling them as souvenirs.
The fragile sheet of paper – which has a guiding price of between €5,000 and €7,000 - includes the final two paragraphs of the Proclamation and the signatures printed on the lower half.
Fewer than 15 examples of these half-sheets have been recorded, making it even rarer than the full-sheet document, according to Whyte’s Auctioneers.
The items are available to view until Saturday evening at Whyte’s gallery on Molesworth Street in Dublin 2.
The auction takes places at 1pm the following day in the nearby Freemasons’ Hall.
More information is available at www.whytes.ie.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Would it be too much for the government to buy these before the auction & put them on permanent display?
There’s a number of copies already on permanent display.
Buy them. Take them back. They were stolen. They belong to Ireland.
We already have multiple of the surviving originals, no need to be spending money on more.
Yeah but those are full copies. According to whytes the half copies are worth even more – why would they lie?
I could write my own proclamation, gather together a group of armed loonies and take over a few buildings in Dublin.
Does it have to be Dublin. What about Galway. Better craic in Galway.
I might try Dingle. The pubs there are good for post rebellion relaxation. I could also photo copy my proclamation and sell it to gullible tourists.
We could get Fungi the Dolphin as well. Heard he is a mad b@st@rd.
Any USA citizen who ridiculed their own independence day or the fight for their own independence would be tarred and feathered today. You should get rid of that mutilated stolen symbol of Ireland as your avatar, you are not a citizen of this country nor are you an Irish man. If you wish to loyal to any country other than Ireland then bugger off and be a subservient lackey dog abroad .
Isle of Man, I hear the craic there is 90!
And add to that, you can buy a 1916s irish volunteer uniform, the joke shop beside the gaiety theatre is selling them but they only have a limited supply
Buying memorabilia like kids card games. Cashing in on the sacrifices of the principled. Seeing the Dàil posturing and this stuff makes me think of Yeats. Romantic Ireland is dead and gone…
The Proclamation was reprinted in 1917, but with a typo.
Pack of Smarties to the first person who names the typo.
People need more than smarties these days Diarmuid. Unless of course you’re trying to lure them into your van.
It went off half-cocked to be fair
have your say