The Treaty 1921: Records from the Archives

The National Archives asked us to create a book to showcase the documentary record of the Irish delegation who negotiated the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 — one of the most important documents in Irish history. 

They wanted the book to capture the tension and drama of the Treaty debates, bring to life the personalities and give us new historical insights. At its core the book focuses on negotiating the Treaty but also gives a sense of the everyday world in which the delegates operated, through ephemera and sketches. Structured in chronological order it opens with a timeline giving context to the war, the truce and the negotiations.

The format for the book allowed the documents to be large and viewed in great detail. There is a juxtaposition between everyday ephemeral items: ticket stubs, dinner menus and invoices and government memos, drafts and letters detailing key issues between Dublin and London. Each page from the Treaty is displayed in its entirety with every article succinctly captioned.

The layout and typography throughout the book is pared back and quite solemn allowing the documents and photographs to come to the fore. A gold metallic Pantone ink is used throughout and the book was printed in Munken Rough 120gsm.

We used Swiss Binding for the binding as it allows the book to lay flat when opened making it easier for readers to browse the documents inside and examine them in detail. The exposed spine also gives the impression of a stack of documents.

We collaborated with the National Print Museum in creating the artwork for the cover. The design is inspired by the then Dáil Éireann letterhead which is set in Gaelic type. We used a letterpress print (created with assistance from Mary Plunkett) using Gaelic type from the National Print Museum’s collection to capture the 1920’s feel without being a pastiche.

The Gaelic type used was DeLittle’s 12-line Gaelic accompanied with numerals from Stephenson Blake Old Style no. 5, as the number set from the DeLittle case did not pair well with the Gaelic type. Typically Gaelic typefaces do not have a letter y so to combat this we combined a lowercase u and i. The tail of the y we created was mirrored for the final version that was digitised and printed on the cover in gold foil. The cover also features portraits of Arthur Griffith and David Lloyd George — the leaders of both delegations.