Historic Americana
Original “Statue of Liberty” Engraved Steel Printing Plate
c. 1880s, “Statue of Liberty” Hand-Engraved Steel Printing Plate, Choice Extremely Fine.
This original masterfully Hand-Engraved Steel Printing Plate measures 3” x 4.5” with a steel outer frame to 5” x 10”. This Plate shows a pair of fine stress cracks at the left side apparently from use, and was then placed in the larger frame for protection. Original paper wrapper is present. This impressive period engraved printing plate of the Statue being used for Imprints by the Franklin Bank Note Company of New York (Incorporated 1877). This Plate has lustrous medium steel-gray color with pleasing overtones of blue, violet and gold across its surfaces. A great collectible for Bank Note Vignette, New York City, and American history buffs of all sorts that love our “Statue of Liberty” by Frédéric Bartholdi from the people of France, dedicated on October 28, 1886.
Designed by Frédéric Bartholdi and dedicated on October 28, 1886. The Statue of Liberty was a gift to the United States from the people of France, is of a robed female figure representing Libertas, the Roman goddess of freedom, who bears a torch and a tabula ansata (a tablet evoking the law) upon which is inscribed the date of the American Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776. A broken chain lies at her feet. The statue has become an icon of freedom and of the United States.

Bartholdi was inspired by French law professor and politician Édouard René de Laboulaye, who commented in 1865 that any monument raised to American independence would properly be a joint project of the French and American peoples. Due to the troubled political situation in France, work on the statue did not commence until the early 1870s. In 1875, Laboulaye proposed that the French finance the statue and the Americans provide the pedestal and the site.

Bartholdi completed the head and the torch-bearing arm before the statue was fully designed, and these pieces were exhibited for publicity at international expositions. The arm was displayed at the Centennial Exposition in 1876 and in New York's Madison Square Park from 1876 to 1882. A ceremony of dedication was held on the afternoon of October 28, 1886. President Grover Cleveland, the former New York governor, presided over the event.