Stuart Devlin Coin Designer

Some years ago I had a chat for about 1/2 an hour with Stuart Devlin at a jewelry show where we were discussing gem faceting, but we also discussed coin design. At that time, he was appointed Goldsmith to the Queen.

His favourite design for Australian coinage was the 20c, and when he explained why, and I very easily understood. He was given a free hand in the conception of all the proposed coinage (1c, 2c, 5c, 10c, 20c and the silver 50c). He had one restriction only, and that was that the silver 50c had to depict the Australian Coat of Arms. His favourite design was for the 20c. He came up, he said with a most successful depiction of the platypus under water, that all Aussies are familiar with.

Technically, it is very difficult to depict the surface of water on a coin, but he was able to achieve this, and with the platypus underneath. The coin design I think, is highly successful, because even with extensive wear, the design intent in no way is degraded. And all of this was acomplished in the round frame of the coin, not the rectangular frame of a picture. The coin design also allows it to be struck up properly with a single strike, on relative hard cupro nickel alloy. He admitted that he got the most satisfaction of all the designs from the 20c.