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 Replies: 10 / Views: 1,552 |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
591 Posts |
https://www.PCGS.com/news/transitio...nage-in-1892Out of 300 candidate designs submitted by the public, apparently none were deemed suitable for use to replace the Seated coinage. Has anyone ever seen these 300 designs published anywhere? It would be really neat to see what the public came up with and if the designs were really as terrible as the judges in the early 1890s indicated.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4233 Posts |
As far as I know, none of the competition entries are known to exist. There's a 3 year old thread on CU you can find searching on "1891 coin design competition". Apparently the requirements specified that plaster models be submitted, and they were returned to the artists. Some of the artists were well known, or became well known. So maybe somewhere in a closet or flea market they still exist, and nobody knows they were entered in this competition. Here's an article describing many of the entries, far right column, zoom in. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/...Range&page=1 |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
94367 Posts |
Very interesting, thanks!
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Pillar of the Community
United States
1613 Posts |
These sort of things intrigue me. To the point that I research the matter digging deep, and never Wikipedia, searching sources such as the Newman Numismatic Portal quite frequently. Thanks kbbpll for the link.
ANA member - PAN Member - BCCS Member There are no problems only solutions - the late, great John Lennon
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Pillar of the Community
United States
4233 Posts |
I also try to dig into this kind of stuff. I imagine there are a lot of similar newspaper clippings online now - this competition was big news at the time. It would be fun to find one of the submissions, but from the article descriptions some of them sound kind of wacky. Is anyone else having problems with NNP lately? A few months ago I noticed that all the controls on the page are gone - I can no longer switch to full page mode, zoom in, etc. I think it used to redirect to archive.org which has the controls, but now all I get on NNP is a single scrolling window with scans of archive pages but it's too small to see anything. For example, here's general correspondence for June 1891 https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/book/579618 which might have relevant info but it's too hard to navigate. I did happen to land on this, and I'm sure there are more nuggets in there somewhere!  |
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Moderator
 United States
188770 Posts |
Very interesting! Seems like it is another one of those historical events where we wished photography had been more ubiquitous.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3652 Posts |
I remember hearing a lecture years ago (late 1980s) about Barber's reign as designer and some of the petty things he either did or was accused of doing. (There are sharply differing views of Barber, and I don't want to step in the middle of that battle. It seems pretty darned irrelevant after more than a century!) He either did or didn't have a feud with Morgan. He either did or didn't get along with Theodore Roosevelt. He plainly refused to use the Janvier machine that was purchased by the Mint in 1906. It wasn't used by the Mint until a few years after Barber's death, I believe with the Peace dollar. Barber maintained loyalty to the old Hill reducing machine, and outsourced coin reductions from the plaster models to Medallic Art Company. Medallic Art's engraver was Weil, who tried to convince Barber to use the Janvier. Barber apparently had a financial interest in Medallic Art. Today, that would be viewed as a conflict of interest, but it was accepted practice when Barber was engraver, and it would be incorrect to call it improper using today's standards. I recall a brief mention of the 1891-1892 redesign efforts and a statement that Barber delegated design review to Medallic Art, possibly to determine whether the designs could be coined. I don't have any source for that except my memory of hearing it in a lecture. That's a long roundabout way of wondering if records of the 1891 design process may be wherever Medallic Art's records went, rather than in the U.S. Archives. |
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Bedrock of the Community
United States
17884 Posts |
The 1891 design competition never had a chance. Two of the three judges felt that there was only one person in the country competent to design the coins. Themself.
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Pillar of the Community
United States
3652 Posts |
 That does tend to have a bit of a chilling effect.  |
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Moderator
United States
188770 Posts |
Quote:
The 1891 design competition never had a chance. Two of the three judges felt that there was only one person in the country competent to design the coins. Themself.  |
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Pillar of the Community
United States
2624 Posts |
Interesting article, thanks for sharing! Quote:
Has anyone ever seen these 300 designs published anywhere? The only thing I've found so far that describes any of those designs is from the American Journal of Numismatics, July 1891, quoted in Q. David Bowers' A Guide Book of Barber Silver Coins: Quote:
We understand that the design favored by the latter gentleman [Augustus Saint-Gaudens] was something after the rude but beautiful coinage of the Greeks. But these designs it would be impossible to follow, and Mr. Barber said in a recent interview, that there was no machinery in existence to coin such pieces as cheaply and as quickly as was necessary. Doubtless American ingenuity could overcome this difficulty, but there are others which cannot be overcome. No three coins could be piled with stability; the third would inevitably fall; their high relief would not sustain the constant wear of circulation without soon being defaced, the protecting rim on our present coins not being compatible with such devices; their irregularity, and that is one of the chief features advocated by those whose suggestions seem to have been sought, would prevent their use, and at the same time make an easy field for counterfeiters. |
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Replies: 10 / Views: 1,552 |
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Posted 12/23/2020 09:27 am
