The
new circulating coin designs for Great Britain have
caused quite a stir. They're a radical departure from the classical designs seen on British coins since decimalization, both in having a unifying "theme" and the execution of that theme across each of the denominations.
The theme is the shield from the British coat of arms. The new 1 pound coin shows the shield in it's entirety, while each of the smaller coins shows a magnified portion of the shield. The result is that, if you acquire one of each denomination, you can make a kind of jigsaw puzzle and assemble a near-complete copy of the shield that appears on the pound.
This is a radical departure for British coinage, and one can't help but wonder how the normally conservative British public will react to their new coins, but it is by no means the first time that a country has chosen to partition their heraldry on their coinage.
Another interesting example is from Uruguay in the 1970's. The shield of the
coat of arms of Uruguay is divided into four parts: a pair of scales, a representation of the hilltop fort in Montevideo, a horse and a bull.
In the series of coins issued for the coinage reform in the mid-1970's, these four items appear on the
50,
20,
10 and
5 centesimo coins respectively. The smaller coins, the 1 and
2 centesimos, show the crest from the arms, the Sun of May. The higher denominations issued at the same time don't show the entire coat of arms, but many coins in earlier and later series do.
The final interesting example of partitioned heraldry is from Iceland. The
coat of arms of Iceland has a fairly standard "Nordic cross" design on the shield, but these arms are unusual in having four supporting characters, rather than the usual two. These four characters are the four mythical Protectors of the four quarters of the island: the Eagle of the northwest, the Bull of the southwest, the Dragon of the northeast and the Giant of the southeast.
On the coinage series of Iceland issued in the reform of 1981, each of these four characters features individually on the
5 aurar,
10 aurar,
50 aurar and
1 krona, respectively. All of the
higher denominations show a quartered arms-style rendering of all four Protectors, as they appear on the smaller coins.
If the Royal Australian Mint is running out of ideas for new multi-coin programmes, or even a complete overhaul of coinage designs, they could do worse than giving partitioned heraldry a shot. There are six elements on the Australian coat of arms, one for each State - which could be nicely spread across the six denominations currently in circulation. Of course, deciding which State would get placed on which denomination might get tricky...
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
Posted 09/01/2008 9:04 pm
