Eighteen-pence note, issued March 25, 1776, typeset, two colors, Burlington: Isaac Collins.
Isaac Collins (1746-1817), a Quaker printer and bookseller, learned his craft in Delaware and Pennsylvania before settling in New Jersey where he became the colony’s Royal Printer. Despite his official position, Collins supported the Revolution and expressed his patriotic views in the New-Jersey Gazette newspaper, which he printed during the war.
This bill features advanced anti-counterfeiting techniques from the era. It was printed with both red and black ink, and its reverse carries the warning “To Counterfeit is Death.” Most notably, it features a “nature print”—a design created from a leaf of sage pressed into plaster and cast in lead type metal. First developed in 1739 by Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) and botanist Joseph Breintnall (d. 1746), the “nature print” process was especially useful for currency because each leaf was unique, with intricate vein structures that thwarted counterfeiters. Several colonies, including Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey, adopted this technique to safeguard their currency.