Medals

The original design for the China Medal of the early 1840s, by William Wyon, depicted a crowned British Lion standing over a defeated Chinese Dragon.   As would be expected of Wyon, it was undoubtedly attractive but the suspicion has always been that officials were worried about the offence that might be caused to the Chinese by showing the Dragon in such a symbolically vanquished manner.

The medal in this form was never issued and the unmounted specimen in the Mint collection is one of the few of this original type that has survived.   An alternative version was prepared for the medals as subsequently awarded, also designed by William Wyon, with a less controversial arrangement of a trophy of arms.

Early in the reign of Elizabeth I, in the aftermath of the debasements inflicted on the coinage during the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI, a recoinage was undertaken that was aimed at restoring faith in the fineness of the coins. It subsequently came to be regarded as one of the greatest achievements of her long reign and a commemorative medal was struck to mark the occasion, a rare silver specimen of which is in the Royal Mint Museum collection.

The obverse bears a bejewelled effigy of the queen and on the reverse a seated figure of Justice is depicted within a similar floral border to that which frames the portrait of Elizabeth I. That the queen took the trouble to visit the Royal Mint in the Tower of London on 10 July 1561 can perhaps be taken as evidence of the personal importance she attached to the reform.

The fine portrait medal illustrated here by William Wyon is of Sir Joseph Banks, the famous naturalist and President of the Royal Society. Having a medal of Banks in the Royal Mint Museum has a special relevance because it was through his generosity that the Museum became the beneficiary in 1818 of a small collection of coins and medals that he had put together. But much more significantly, the association with Banks led to the gift of 2000 coins from the collection of his late sister Sarah Sophia Banks.

Sarah Sophia’s coins were shared between the British Museum and the Royal Mint Museum, in accordance with the wishes of the family. It therefore becomes difficult to determine purely from the medal’s reverse inscription, PRESENTED COLLECTION OF COINS TO NATION 1818, which particular act of generosity was being commemorated. Banks was deeply involved in the reform of the coinage and in the relocation of the Royal Mint to new premises on Tower Hill, making him a key figure for the organisation at that time and one justifiably represented in the Royal Mint Museum.

The Royal Mint Museum contains a charming group of medallic portraits of seven of the children of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. They appear to have been made in 1850 and therefore do not include the two children who were born after that date.  

The skilfully-executed portraits are the work of Leonard Wyon, a member of the extremely talented family of engravers whose name is so well known to numismatists. The son of William Wyon, he was actually born in the Royal Mint in 1826 and, though he never succeeded his father as Chief Engraver, he enjoyed an active association with the Mint that was to last until his death in 1891. These particular portraits, however, were not commissioned by the Royal Mint and little seems to be known at present about the circumstances in which they were prepared, but for some reason the dies have survived in the Royal Mint Museum, along with single-sided bronze impressions roughly the size of a half-crown.

Corresponding reverse dies also survive, showing the name of the Prince or Princess and the date of birth.

Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa: Born Nov 21 1840

The eldest child of Queen Victoria, known to her family as Vicky, was named Princess Royal in 1841. She married Prince Fredrick William of Prussia at the age of 17 and became Crown Princess of Prussia in 1861.

The Royal Mint Museum has an Abyssinia Medal of 1867-68 named on the reverse to R A Hill, Chief Coiner. The medal is of interest because of its association with a well-known Royal Mint official, someone who, as head of production for 30 years during the second half of the 19th century, was an important figure in Royal Mint history.

But the medal is also interesting from another point of view. With the Abyssinia Medal the name of the recipient was stamped in relief on the reverse, which required the making of special composite dies with detachable centres. This particular specimen, named to the man responsible for achieving this technical feat, may well have been a trial piece to see if this unusual method of production would work.

That the medal collection of the Royal Mint Museum should be dominated by the United Kingdom will perhaps come as no great surprise but the collection also contains a sizeable number of overseas medals and these include many on the theme of overseas mints.   There are visit medals, medals depicting mint buildings and of particular interest are those which focus on minting machinery.

At the centre of this oval-shaped medal or plaque, from the Paris Mint, is the commanding presence of a screw press, the same ornately decorated press that was used on official Paris Mint postcards over 100 years ago.   Celebrating on medals the art of making coins has a long history and it is entirely appropriate that a museum devoted to furthering knowledge of this art should have a good and growing collection of such medals.

The unusual uniface piece illustrated here is a trial design by Humphrey Paget for the Second World War Defence Medal.   A symbolic shield protects Big Ben from flames and bombs, and the time is set at 9 o'clock, the hour when people listened to the radio for news of the war.  

Feeling that it contained some of his best work, Paget himself was particularly pleased with the design but he was in competition with other artists, among them Percy Metcalfe and Harold Wilson Parker, and in the event he lost out to a conventional heraldic design by Wilson Parker.   This uniface trial of Paget's design has only recently been purchased by the Royal Mint Museum and, given the importance of the Defence Medal, as well as the Museum's long-standing interest in the work of Paget, it was a particularly worthwhile addition to the collection.