01
The portrait
The head and beard create a dense focus above the quieter coat.
Frederick Douglass
National Historic Site
The work of words. The place of a life.
Douglass sits at a desk while Cedar Hill rises behind him. The design joins a public voice to a private home through the act of writing.
Read the reverse ⟶DenominationQuarter dollar
Weight5 troy ounces
Fineness99.9% silver
Diameter76.2 mm
Mint markNone · bullion
IssuerUnited States Mint
Reverse design anatomy
A person.
A page. A home.
The Mint identifies Douglass seated at a writing desk with his Washington home behind him. The paper is not a legible quotation, and no specific manuscript is identified.
The following close reading describes visible forms. It does not assign undocumented intentions to the artists.
02
The writing hand
The pen reaches the sheet; its contents cannot be read from the image.
03
Cedar Hill
Porch columns and rooflines locate the home behind the seated figure.
The place behind the coin
A home that preserves
more than a portrait
Douglass purchased Cedar Hill in 1877. NPS preserves the house as a place to understand his life and his work against slavery and for civil rights. The desk connects this domestic setting to sustained intellectual labor.
NPS pages differ on whether residence is dated from 1877 or 1878; the purchase in 1877 and his death in 1895 are distinguished here. No speech, manuscript title or invented quotation is attached to the pictured page.
- 1877Cedar Hill purchased
- 1895Douglass dies
- 2017Issue #37
Historical context, not a reconstruction. No unverified event photograph is used.
Same design. A larger canvas.
From pocket change
to a statement in silver
The 2017 design also belongs to the circulating quarter. At 76.2 mm, the five-ounce silver coin is 3.14 times wider by diameter—not 3.14 times heavier.
The quarter is a measured outline: an exact authorized quarter photograph is not bound for this page. It is not a miniature bullion image.
Collect with context
Know the design.
Know the object.
Reverse design: Thomas Hipschen; sculpt: Phebe Hemphill.
- Standard bullion
- No mint mark · Authorized Purchasers · incuse edge weight and fineness.
- Collector five-ounce
- P mint mark · special finish · a separate object. Collector totals are not bullion mintages.