The Illinois Watch Company of Springfield awarded medallions -- struck by Whitehead & Hoag of Newark, NJ -- beginning in 1924, to hundreds of high school students who won the Lincoln Essay Contest. Jacob Bunn, president of the Watch Company sent a booklet announcing the contest to 23,000 American high schools:
Quote:
"In view of this city being the former home and burial place of our martyred president, Abraham Lincoln, and desiring to encourage the study of his life and character, this company without selfish motives have [sic] been considering for some time the advisability of presenting annually, to a student in the senior class of each High School in the United States, a very handsome medal of Abraham Lincoln. The idea in mind," Bunn continued, "is to present the medal on Lincoln's birthday" to the student at each high school who is deemed by a panel of at least three teachers to have written "the best short essay" on Lincoln
The obverse portrait is based on painter Douglas Volk's 1908 rendition of Lincoln, one of "a series of Lincoln portraits that were based in part on the Lincoln life mask made by his father, Leonard Volk."
The medal was sculpted by 53 year-old sculptor, painter, and book illustrator Charles L. Hinton, who was "close friends at the National Academy of Design in New York City " with Volk. On the obverse, below the date of Lincoln's death, "in minuscule size, in large and small caps, the names of the artist who drew the original (delineavit) and the sculptor who modeled it (sculpsit): Douglas.Volk. / Del. and Chas.L.Hinton. / Sc: (with the copyright symbol preceding Volk's name)".
There was a great deal of negotiating between Volk and Walter C. Heath, president of Whitehead & Hoag, over the design of the reverse (all of which is detailed in the article linked below).
Volk was adamant his work "could never justify its use for advertising purposes." He was unwilling to allow "Illinois Watch Company" on the medal. Volk's stand against commercializing Lincoln prevailed.
"In American high schools, the essay contest expired after February 12, 1928."
Volk's depiction of Lincoln was featured as a 4 cent stamp from November 1954 until January 1963:
Quotes above sourced from John Hoffmann's Summer 2003 article for the
Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association: "Lincoln Essay Contests, Lincoln Medals, and the Commercialization of Lincoln." The full article is hosted by a division of the University of Michigan Library:
https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2...iew=fulltext and is a worthwhile read. The battle over the "advertising" of the sponsoring company--Illinois Watch Company-- and painter Volk is a fascinating read, as is the history of the Essay contests export to Japan.
Lastly, I give a tip of the captbilly cap to fellow member WHC for sharing info on this fascinating example of a Lincoln medal.
" Even a clock that's stopped is right twice a day. "
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Posted 02/20/2025 9:06 pm
