Tag Archives: medallions

General Gleanings

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I found some nice stuff when moving things from one house to the next yesterday. Unfortunately, my feelings of joy were immediately dampened by a run of finding rubbish. The original plan was to leave that in Nottingham and have a skip to take it away. Unfortunately, over the years, things built up and became mixed and it’s become a lot harder to separate the two. This is particularly true at the moment, as I have a bad back and standing for extended periods can be quite trying.

The joy returned when I had an email accepting a poem. It’s a magazine that has published me before, but a new editor, who has constantly turned me down when acting as a guest editor at this magazine and at others. This counts as a small victory on two counts and validates the policy of increasing the number of submissions rather than cherry picking  the ones that are more likely to be successful.

The items were relatively modest, a battered white metal medallion, a worn coin and a 2d transport token.

The Nelson medallion is a membership token for the Shipwrecked Fishermen and Mariners Society. The Society was founded n 1839, so it post-dates Nelson by a few years. This one is dated 1882 and has a number scratched to the left of Nelson’s face – 3157. The slot on the top allows it to be worn on a ribbon as proof of membership. The charity was set up to provide lifeboats and support for shipwrecked sailors or their widows, orphans and parents.  They decided to give up the lifeboats in the 1850s and specialise in the care of survivors and dependents.

The coin is a 1 Franc coin of 1808. The mint Mark “A” seen to the right of the date denotes the Paris Mint. The 1808 A coin makes up 49% of the coin’s mintage and is thus the commonest and cheapest one. Added to its worn condition and this is a coin with a lot of history but not much else going for it. In 1808 Napoleon tried to extend the trade embargo against the UK and invaded the Iberian Peninsula, putting his brother on the throne of Spain and starting the Peninsula war, which would, in 1814, see Wellington’s victorious army sweep into France across the Pyrenees. Sic semper tyrannis.

 

The token is a 2d ticket for one of the Liverpool horse-drawn buses of the 19th Century, probably 1850s – 70s, but I still need to do a bit of work on that one.  This is quite a dark, well-worn specimen, which is good in this context, as somebody mde some copies a few years ago, which always makes me suspicious of examples in good condition.

Connected!

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Robin

Yes, the day finally arrived and the worries dispersed. We are now connected to the internet, it seems to be running well and I can start blogging again.

The downside is that Julia is now abusing the connection to play Christmas music. It’s currently The Pretenders with 2,000 Miles, so it could be worse. It could, for instance, be . . . I spoke too soon. It’s just changed to It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas. There are still five days to go, surely I don’t need to switch to unremitting jollity just yet.

Well, a lot has happened in the last few days. We are now spending more time here than we do in Nottingham and, psychologically, this is beginning to feel like home. Talking of which, I’m going to leave my office now and walk through to the kitchen for coffee and biscuits without wearing a coat. It’s a bit different to the old system, where I would already be wearing my coat as I typed on the dining room table at this time of year.

Robin at Budby Flash

I say “office”. It’s the smallest bedroom. If I stretch out my arms my fingertips touch the walls, but after 35 years of planning an office/writing room it feels like luxury.  It’s not quite organised yet, but that’s going to take time.  We didn’t, for instance, have room to fit the printer into the car on the last trip, so I can write, but I can’t print. When we do return, we want to bring more paintings down, so it’s likely we still won’t have room for the printer on that trip either.  We did make room for a vegetable strainer and hand blender this time.

Talking of kitchen appliances, I’ve just been reading the microwave instruction book again. It’s a remarkable bit of work. It is crammed with detail and instructions, but after reading it I am left none the wiser about how to use it or what I can do with it. After spending hours selecting the one with the most features, and daydreaming about my adventures with microwaves, I’m left with the feeling that I will mostly be cooking soup, potatoes and pies with soggy crusts. I could have bought something considerably cheaper if I’d been more realistic in my assessment of my skills.

Robin

Talking of which, we finally, after several misadventures, have a second freezer. The one in the kitchen is a bit small and we have more or less filled it after buying Christmas snacks and fish fingers, and freezing three lots of soup. That’s why I have been reading the microwave manual again. I swear it’s easier to fly to the moon than it is to defrost a block of soup for lunch. Eventually, I suppose, I will get used to it.

Anyway, can’t linger, as I have things to write for the Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire. If you could have a quick look and press some “Like” buttons it would be appreciated. I’ve just had one published about the 1914 bombardment of Scarborough, though if you wait till next time there’s a write up about the Duke of Clarence and why he wasn’t (as has been claimed in the past) Jack the Ripper. Oh yes, there’s a lot of history in medallions.

Pictures represent Christmas jollity.

Robin at Rufford Abbey

 

Three Medallions and a Lot to Learn

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The joy of collecting modern medallions is that you never know what your searches will turn up. A few months ago I bought a large bronze medallion in its original box. The subject is Sir Richard Burbidge, a name which meant nothing to me. In the box was a compliments slip “With my deep appreciation and thanks for your loyalty and support during my time as Chairman of the Harrods Group”. It still meant very little, though Harrods is, of course, a name recognised over most of the world.

More interesting was the style. A closer look at the eBay picture confirmed that it was by Paul Vincze. He is a well known name in the world of medallions and is probably best known in this country for his series of medallions celebrating the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s birth.

Vincze was a Jewish-Hungarian sculptor and medallist, born in Hungary in 1907. He studied in Italy and moved to Britain in 1938 to escape Nazi persecution. He was naturalised in 1948 and represented Britain in the last ever Artistic Olympics, held in London in that year. Apart from his Shakespeare medals he is known for the medals he designed for Israel, and for designing coins for Ghana, Libya, Nigeria, Malawi and Guinea.

Sir Richard Burbidge Bt, CBE (1897–1966) was, as the inscription tells us, Chairman of Harrods from 1945 until 1959. He was the third to hold the baronetcy, and the third member of the family to be Chairman of Harrods. He was educated at Rugby School, served in the Great War as a Captain in the Army Service Corps, studied retail distribution methods in the USA for a year after the war and joined Harrods in 1920. He succeeded his father as Chairman in 1945, was awarded the CBE in 1946 for his wartime work with the NAAFI, and left the company after it was taken over by the House of Fraser. He stayed in retail and, after six months on the board, became Chairman of British Home Stores.

The medal is bronze and signed on both sides by Vincze. The obverse depicts a profile of Sir Richard and the reverse has a classical scene of Mercury (god of commerce) and Ceres (goddess of bountiful harvests). Both, presumably, are seen as relevant to a large retail operation. It is 57mm in diameter and comes in a fitted case with a compliments card thanking the recipient for their loyalty and support.

The Shakespeare medal is one of his better known works, as mentioned above. This example is bronze and 38mm in diameter. They were made in a variety of sizes and metals – 57mm, 38mm and 31mm, platinum, gold, silver (.999 and ,925) and bronze. There was even an 8mm size, though it looks like a charm for a bracelet rather than a medallion. He was also responsible for a series of medallions showing scenes from Shakespeare’s plays and a series of wall-mounted plaques showing 36 of the plays. For some reason he missed out Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VI Part II. These plaques are 28cm in diameter and were rediscovered in 2014 when a wall was moved during a change of exhibitions at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

The third medal commemorates the 50th Anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. It is 59mmm across, bilingual and marked “State of Israel” and “2242” on the edge. It comes in its original packet from the Israel Government Coins and Medals Corporation, who were another major user of Vincze’s work. To summarise the Balfour Declaration is beyond me. It has kept historians occupied for the last hundred years and its effects can still be seen every time we switch on the news.

So, from Hungary to Harrods, and from Warwickshire to Tel Aviv. It is amazing how much there is to learn from the hobby of Numismatics, and the prompting of a few medallions.

Watery Rum and a Welshman’s Ear

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Some of you will have recognise part of the title, particularly, I suspect, those of you who do cryptic crosswords. Yes Derrick, I’m looking at you.

It may be easier if you recognise the medallions in the header picture. They are easy enough if you have years of sorting through junk boxes, but are more difficult if you don’t. They weren’t the best of quality when they were new, but time has not improved them. The one on the right shows little evidence that anyone with talent was employed in the manufacturing process: the one on the left shows more talent in design and less wear but a modern viewer will still find it tricky. I know what they say, and even then I have trouble reading some of the words.

Admiral Vernon Medal for Portobello – Obv

The admiral in question, Edward Vernon, was nicknamed Old Grog because he habitually wore a cloak made from grogram, a coarse mixed cloth made of wool and silk with a gum stiffening. He was the one that issued the order that all Royal Naval run rations were to be diluted to help prevent drunkenness. It would take a long post to talk about the rum ration, so I won’t. I will just say that Vernon’s nickname became attached to the diluted rum, which became known as grog.

That’s one bit done. How about the next bit? Any echoes of past history lessons coming through? Anyone remember Captain Robert Jenkins? Or the War of Jenkins’ Ear?

Admiral Vernon Medal – Rev

I remember the name of the war, and I remember that Jenkins is supposed to have appeared before parliament and brandished a jar containing the pickled remains of the amputated appendage (sliced off by a Spanish coastguard in the Caribbean) as he demanded retribution. Whether he actually did this or not is a matter of debate, as is the discussion around whether he was smuggling or not. It is a murky area, much like our modern “weapons of mass destruction” debate in the Iraq war.

Eventually, eight years after the incident, King George II issued instructions that reprisals should be taken and Vernon was chosen to be commander.  His naval second-in-command was Commodore Brown, the second figure on the medal with the two men depicted. The “war” was a mixed bag. They famously took Portobello with “six ships only”, in 1739, as the medal says. The victory is commemorated by the areas of Edinburgh and Dublin called Portobello and by the Portobello Road market in London. It also inspired the writing of Rule Britannia!

Admiral Vernon and Commodore Brown Medal – Obv

The expedition also took the port and fortress at Chagres, before moving on to another victory at Cartagena. Well, the medals struck at the time called it a victory. Cartagena was actually a defeat, and a costly one at that.  The Spanish resisted several attacks and then sickness particularly yellow fever, swept through the British forces. By the end of the siege over half the British force was dead or suffering from disease, chiefly yellow fever. The British were able to cope better than some of the newly arrived reinforcements as they already had a year in the tropics to build up some immunity. The “American Regiment” lost nearly 90% of its strength, one of the survivors being Captain Lawrence Washington. On his return he renamed his estate Mount Vernon after his ex-commander, which is how his step-brother George, the revolutionary General, came to live in a house named after a British naval officer.

The British souvenir trade responded with enthusiasm and Admiral Vernon became the most commemorated commoner on British medallions of the 18th Century.  There are over 120 varieties of medallion and they still crop up today – both the examples pictured were bought from junk boxes in the last few weeks.

Admiral Vernon and Commodore Brown Medal – Rev. Note the repaired crack and the broken pin fitting.

One example is very worn,  the other has much more detail, but has been cracked, mended and, at some point, been turned into a brooch. Good examples can make several hundred pounds, but examples like this can be had quite cheaply. One cost me £5 and one was in a bulk lot I bought, which averaged £2 a piece.

I was going to start a regular post called “From the Junk Box” but the junk box is a dying thing and my searches of the last couple of weeks haven’t turned a lot up. To find more junk boxes I may have to travel, and if I’m going to spend more money on fuel it defeats the object of trying to collect on the cheap. I may need a new title. However, when you do find a junk box there is still plenty of history to be had for little money.

Medal on the left is 38mm, medal on the right is 37mm, for those of you who like to know that sort of thing.

This just a brief look at history, but it still runs to over 800 words and doesn’t even touch on the events in Georgia (newly colonised by the British) and Florida, which was still under Spanish control, or Anson’s circumnavigation. So much history, so little time.

 

A Hard Night Talking About Medallions.

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Sorry, I went to the Numismatic Society last night, got home, ate, fell asleep in front of the TV and woke up at 1am with a raging desire to go to bed. So I did. Halfway up the stairs I realised I hadn’t blogged and thought of coming back down. the trouble is that “half an hour” tends to turn into two or three hours as I wake up. I may write a bit but I mainly waste time reading articles on the internet and two hours turns out to be twenty minutes of useful time and a lot of rubbish I didn’t need to read.

The talk at the Society was about medallions. It was by a collector who has been collecting for many years and has a high quality collection of medallions. The ones he showed us started with the Coronation of Edward VI (the first official coronation medallion, and went all the way through to Charles III. The early one was a bit crude, but it was 1547 and medallions were a comparatively new thing in this country. It had a picture of Edward on the front and an inscription on the back in Latin, Hebrew and English. The only picture I can find is a slightly different design.

It then went on through over an hour of superb medallions, which taught me a lot about medallions but very little about the history they commemorated. On the other hand, it would have taken too long to fit more in, so you can’t have everything. An hour and a quarter is really a bit too long for my elderly bones to sit in one position.

My more modest medallion display, on the other hand, went most un-noticed. I’m starting to wonder if it’s worth the effort. However, it does make me sort things out, so it probably is. Next month I am displaying paper fund-raising flags. The talk is in Edwardian Postcards.

The header picture is a tribute medal from Maybole in Ayrshire. The other is from Mottram and Hattersley, which is just outside Manchester. They come, as you can see, in a variety of designs.

Mottram and Hattersley Tribute Medal 1920

Medallic Meanderings – The Automobile Association (2000)

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There’s no point letting the work I did on the medallion talk go to waste, so here is some of it reused as a blog post. Not every one will lend itself to use as a blog post, unless the post is on the subject of curing insomnia, but some will stand on their own.

The medal is, as collectors like to know, issued by the Automobile Association, 45mm in diameter and made from a metal that isn’t easy to identify. It’s copper in colour but likely to be a cheap alloy rather than pure copper. An alloy, because it needs to resist scratching and similar things and cheap because that is the modern way. To be fair, in a world where accountants govern our lives, we are lucky that anyone still bothers to make medals. On the other hand, when you look at what they charged me for membership over the years, they could afford it.

AA Medallion 1905-2000

The reverse is plain with as tablet in the middle and the number 1,400 stamped on it. We originally had several others in the shop, with a  mix of numbers. I selected this one because I like numbers with noughts on the end.

The obverse bears the dates 1905 – 2000 above an old-fashioned AA telephone box. The box itself is over the new AA logo (the old one can be seen on the front of the box (it used to look a bit like an owl to me), I have no photo, but this link shows several varieties.

The figures represent an AA patrolman of the 1920s  on the left and a modern one on the right.

In 2000 the AA demutualised and became just another public company, which is why the medallion celebrates 95 years instead of a centenary, as would be usual. During that time the number of cars on the road rose from approximately 1,000 to 27,200,000. In 2020 we had  32,7000,000. That’s a lot more cars, needing a lot more roads. Originally you used to buy petrol from the pharmacy, but as more cars appeared more people started to sell it. In 1919 the AA opened the first filling station in the UK. I didn’t know that until I looked it up to chek some fats before writing this post. This just goes to show the educational benefits of collecting medallions.

 

 

Still Struggling

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Much of writing a slideshow presentation involves the same difficulty as writing a poem, with the extra difficulty of facts and photos being thrown in.

I’ve successfully procrastinated for eight months now, and followed that up with evasion, displacement activity and sloth over the last few months. That moved on to struggling to write in the last couple of weeks as I just couldn’t get into it. That is quite like poetry, though the timescale is different. I did managed to produce some photos, facts and slides but I couldn’t get the narrative going and my internal editor has seen me start and restart the presentation a dozen times. In the end I decided to put my head down and start writing. Eventually, it came right.

I now have a suitable opening and quite a lot of other bits and pieces. I also have 24 hours and 13 minutes before I am supposed to turn up to the meeting (I decided to take Monday off work – I could do with a break and I need the time to finish.

The plan is to blast through the rest of the slides tonight and establish the order and narrative. I will check the timing and write a list of things that still need doing. I will finalise it tomorrow morning before I take and load any extra photographs I need, check facts and write the prompts. I don’t need prompts as such, because it’s all on screen or in my head, but there are always a few last minute facts to note. Mainly though, I do it as practice and memory training and, to be honest, in case the presentation doesn’t work and I have to revert to the old-fashioned method of talking at a crowd.

That, I think, is about it. I will load this post and get back to work.

Shakespeare Medallion by Paul Vincze

Butlins Veleta Competition Medallion 1954

Saturday Stretches Ahead

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I fell asleep after Julia went to bed last night and woke at half past midnight. That is quite early for me, but I decided I need to become more regular in my habits so I went to bed. As usual, I had only a moderate night, but have woken feeling quite  good so am starting as I mean to go on.

After blogging I will make breakfast, make sandwiches and go to work, where I will endeavour to be hard-working, cheerful and polite. It can be a bit of a struggle at times but I will make the effort.

We have a problem with a customer . . .

How many times have you heard that? He wrote claiming he hasn’t had his coins delivered. This isn’t unusual, as Royal mail is, according to rumour, two months behind with deliveries. The difference in this case is that w have no record of his order. We wrote and told him this – it is not the first time people have become confused. He wrote back, being borderline impolite, repeating that he had ordered from us. In the wait for the reply we had actually7 found out what had happened – he had ordered using a different name. It seems that we don’t just sell coins, we have to be mind readers too. Time is money, as they say, and even if the package turns up today it’s hard to make a profit on a £7 coin sale when you have just spent £5 worth of time sorting out the stupidity of a customer.

Sorry if this falls short of “the customer is always right” but that doesn’t apply where the customer changes eBay names in the middle of a sale.

This may be the first of several posts today, as I will be working on my medallion presentation after work and will need something to help me waste even more time. Sixty hours to go, if my mental arithmetic is correct.

Butlins Veleta Competition Medallion 1954

No Time . . .

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Sorry, I’ve become unreliable again. I’m having to devote too much energy to  problems in real life (as opposed to the bowdlerised version I present in the blog). One, which I can discuss now, is sciatica. Some heat, some stretching and some attention to my seating arrangements have improved it after two weeks of problems and I’m happy that I’m on the way to recovery.

The other is annoying, frustrating, but essentially trivial matter at work, which has been annoying me, and preventing me from concentrating, for the last few days. This is something and nothing, and the annoyance at being unable to shake it off is actually greater than the annoyance at the situation. However, that’s work, and has no place in my blog apart from a passing comment.

Sometimes, like when I had two boundary disputes with neighbours and a collapsing chimney stack, you just have to work through them carefully and persistently. In the end, all three problems were resolved and though one of the neighbours was annoyed with me, nothing bad happened. The one who was annoyed really had no reason for it – I won’t go over the details as it still irritates me.

This morning I got a new acceptance, so that’s good. Three of last months submissions were competitions, so I won’t get any sort of answer for months yet, probably never, as they disappear into the black hole that is the fate of most competition entries. Of the other four I now have two acceptances and am waiting for two. It compensates fro my other problems in some way – I’m still in pain and I’m still annoyed, but at least I am also grinning while all that is happening.

My current energy is devoted to catching up on reading blogs (with limited success I’m afraid), reading Laurie’s latest book  (I’m only two months late) and thinking about starting the presentation on medallions. That’s about ten days away and I really must start.

In fact I will go and start now . . .

A Night of Coins and Thoughts of Medallions

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Numismatic Society of Nottinghamshire tonight and one month to go before giving my presentation.

I have done a few slides for it and tried them tonight after the speakers had finished. It didn’t work. That’s the trouble with using Open Office instead of Microsoft. Fortunately we have at least one member on hand to give IT advice and he tells me I can save my slides as PowerPoint slides. I will check tomorrow, as I really need to get moving.

It was short paper night tonight. First up was a video clip of an American talking about the design process for the Californian State Quarter, which I have never felt to be particularly inspiring. The State Quarter Program (sic) is interesting from a numismatic point of view (and an economic one, too) but some of the designs could be better. The Californian one won through in a competition

Second was one of the members talking about his series of books. He has spent 40 years researching the note-issuing banks of England and is now publishing his research (in 43 volumes!). That’s one per county and he has now done six. There is still some way to go. He also showed us a cheque from his collection, written by one member of a local banking family to a prominent local banker. That was quite interesting, I like anything with a story.

Royal Visit to Cardiff (Obv)

Royal Visit to Cardiff (Rev)

Another member gave us a short talk on the future of the 1p and 2p coins. They are now made in copper-coated steel, to keep production costs down. Nobody knows for sure how much they cost to make and the Mint won’t tell us, but the old bronze ones are now worth more as scrap than they are as coins. However, it is illegal to scrap them, so don’t try it. In the USA, they  do release the cost of making coins – 2.1 cents to make a 1 cent coin last year. No wonder governments want to stop making small denomination coins.

Then we had a presentation on measuring the density of Roman coins to check their purity, and looked at the purity in relation to various historical events. It was very interesting, but by that time I had been sitting still for a long time and was beginning to feel chilly, so was glad when it ended and I could get up and walk round a bit. I’d been sitting still so long that I had trouble getting out of the chair. This won’t be a problem next month.

Liskeard 1940 – a story involving a future Prime Minister