Posted 08/26/2018 08:40 am
The drawback with the system is, while you can look at an individual coin better, the display as a whole suffers from having a big, bulky trolley and rails taking up a lot of the space. SO it's more for showcasing individual rare coins, rather than a set or a series.
For ancient coins, I've found the simplest way a museum can display both sides of the coin is to mount it in front of a mirror. The mirrored image is obviously backwards, but apart from that it's quite effective. FOr ancient coins which either have no language at all on one side (like many Greek coins) or a language a typical Western observer cannot read, you don;t even really get that "hey, that image is backwards" feeling.
And to counter the "coins are unexciting" issue, the answer is: coins are also one of the few classes of ancient artifacts that the members of the public can safely handle, with minimal protection or training required. A silver or gold coin is pretty indestructible, compared to, say, an ancient sword or pottery vessel.
For ancient coins, I've found the simplest way a museum can display both sides of the coin is to mount it in front of a mirror. The mirrored image is obviously backwards, but apart from that it's quite effective. FOr ancient coins which either have no language at all on one side (like many Greek coins) or a language a typical Western observer cannot read, you don;t even really get that "hey, that image is backwards" feeling.
And to counter the "coins are unexciting" issue, the answer is: coins are also one of the few classes of ancient artifacts that the members of the public can safely handle, with minimal protection or training required. A silver or gold coin is pretty indestructible, compared to, say, an ancient sword or pottery vessel.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
