Are these Tassie coin impressions? I think so. Let me tell you why.

(If you would like to skip all the background noise and jump straight to the, what we now call “Tim Medhurst” Tassie coin impressions, CLICK HERE)

James (1735-1799) and William (1777-1860) Tassie

were primarily known for their plaster, sulfur and paste intaglio gem impressions. James was the most prolific producer of gem casts in the late 18th and first part of the 19th centuries, the epitome of which was the catalogue of his works by Eric Raspe in 1791, a two volume set which included a listing of 15,800 items. Vol I  and Vol II [MyI: See Resources Tab for details].  After James’ death in 1799 his nephew William, who took over the business at the ripe old age of 22, added over 5,000 more. Where all these moulds and impressions came from will be the subject of a future post.

While these casts of engraved gems were their primary business, James, and to a lesser degree William, were artists in their own right sculpting small wax portrait medallions, mostly from life, of primarily British and Scottish personages. White paste casts were produced from these models, which Tassie called “enamels” and were usually suitably framed, such as the one shown to the right of the Architect Robert Adam (1728-1792) c.1792. Additional copies were made for sale. Gray in his Biographies of the Tassies lists 493 known original medallions by them.

As interest in the artistic gem casts faded in the 1820’s and 30’s, William Tassie developed quite a following and business for his small glass seals. Catalogues which referred to these seals as “DEVICES AND EMBLEMS, WITH MOTTOS IN VARIOUS LANGUAGES”, were printed in 1816 (421 items), 1820 (1,002 items), and 1830 (1,559 items). These small glass seals, regardless of who made them, became commonly known as “Tassies”.

The least reported and discussed aspect of the Tassies’ business is their (mostly William’s) coin and medal impression production. There is little doubt that both James and William Tassie made impressions of coins, however, there is very little, if any, mention of this aspect of their work in contemporary narrative. In fact there is little reference at all to Tassie coin impressions aside from some published letters of James and William Tassie and some limited comments in other works.

An Unexplored Subject

In a general sense, even though impressions and copies of coins are mentioned throughout numismatic literature, there is very little in the way of discussion of specific producers and production. Daniela Williams in her paper, “Early modern casts of ancient coins A preliminary study of a recently identified Visconti set by Dugood” p 558 ff, opines “…the production of sets of numismatic casts finds a close parallel in the conceptually similar dactyliothecae (engraved gems), a topic widely investigated by scholars.23 The study of casts of ancient coins, instead, remains a somewhat unexplored subject,24 which is surprising as the two classes of objects are strongly related. It is interesting to note, in fact, that some numismatic sets were produced by the same workshops that made collections of gem impressions.” The footnote further supports the hypothesis, ” 24 It is interesting to note that of the 36 scholarly contributions to the more-than-700-page wide-ranging volume on casts edited by Rune Frederiksen and Eckart Marchand none is devoted to numismatics (Frederiksen/Marchand 2010).” Williams continues writing about the existence of a number of coin impression collections in addition to that by William Dugood (fl. 1715-1767), the creator of the set the article is about, including those by the 19th century Roman gem engraver Antonio Odelli (1785‒1872), by the German lawyer and architect Christian Ludwig Stieglitz (1756‒1836) in Leipzig, by Théodore-Edme Mionnet (1770-1842) from coins in the French Royal collection in Paris, and by Tassie (about 1,000 coin impressions in the Douce collection).

The Tassie Catalogues and Letters.

The production of coin and medal impressions by the Tassie’s is well documented in both the William Tassie 1820 and 1830 Catalogue “advertisements” and in their letters to Alexander Wilson.

Catalogues

Coin and medal impressions are not mentioned in James Tassie’s catalogues of 1775 and 1791, nor in the 1816  catalogue of William Tassie.  They are, however, prominently referred to in the 1820 and 1830 William Tassie catalogues. 1820 Catalogue — “MR. TASSIE has also an extensive and interesting Collection, from the finest Greek and Roman Coins.”  1830 Catalogue — “Also Casts from some of the most interesting and beautiful of the Greek and Roman Coins, equally important to the Historian, Antiquary, and Artist.”     The entire 1830 catalogue is available online.

Notably, none of the catalogues have any coins or medals listed.

James Tassie occasionally mentions medals, but only once in 74 letters between 30 July 1778 to 12 Oct 1798, does he mention coins.

William Tassie, on the other hand, jumps right in, discussing medal and coin impressions in his second letter dated 9 Oct 1801 and continues to address them in most of his letters, 39 in number, the last being dated 6 July 1826. His efforts in making coin impressions center around the collection of Dr. William Hunter. The coins from Hunter’s collection, which has been reported to number over 80,000 items, are now housed in the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow. After Hunter’s death, in 1783, the collection had come under the care of a Dr. Coombe, who, in the early 19th century, allowed William Tassie only limited access to the coins and medals under the strictest of terms (according to Tassie). Tassie was also under a time constraint to copy as many as possible because the collection was to be relocated to Glasgow from London in 1807.

It is apparent from the letters that Wilson makes continued and specific requests of William Tassie to produce coin impressions. Tassie often begins his missives with apologies for delays. He obliges the requests of Mr. Wilson to perform the work almost out of a sense of duty to Wilson. He periodically mentions that he is doing the work at cost and that he must prioritize his time to produce those things that are desired, i.e., that he can produce profitably. After the collection is moved to Glasgow in 1807, Wilson has initial moulds made of the coins there and sends them to Tassie to have final work done and impressions made. Tassie is not always pleased with the quality of those initial impressions, providing, almost in exasperation, instructions for making the moulds—

In letter 25W dated Dec 31,1812 Tassie complains mildly, “…Perhaps you are not aware of the difficulties and trouble it takes before we can get Enamels. We have first to take hollow plasters from the Sulphurs or medals, ….You see the operations from the Sulphurs you send are so many, that in addition to the sharpness already lost the Enamels cannot appear to advantage…” Later in the letter Tassie, with the apparent hope of improving the process, provides instruction, “I shall with pleasure give you every instruction in my power for taking the plaster moulds – the process is very simple – You must take the finest plaster you can get…”

In letter 35W dated 6 June 1818 William Tassie bemoans the state of affairs, “ – We have little demand for works of Taste and Art. Therefor what little I do in antiquity – must be to gratify my own feeling – and not with any view of worldly gain – But we have Business enough in making French & English Devices & Mottoes for Seals – of these we have published a small Catal. “ [MyI: See the posts about Keat’s and Shelley’s fondness of these seals, which certainly represents a wide popularity, especially among the younger generation.]

There is no doubt that William Tassie produced coin impressions.

The antique gem impressions did, in fact, prove to be Tassie’s. Identical images of each were found in the Beazley Archives, either in the James Tassie or William Tassie databases.  Most importantly, the impression of Nemisis, shown left, is not only found in the James Tassie database, the number marked on its side is identical to that in the database and in Raspe’s Tassie Catalogue of 1791. The others in the collection, including the coin impressions, would presumably be Tassies as well. Hence the research into the topic of Tassie coin impressions, which we had never seen.

• It’s clear from numerous sources that the Tassie’s produced impressions of ancient Greek and Roman coins.
• The impressions are very similar in style to the Tassie coin impressions image found in “The Collector” magazine as shown above.
• The unique method of putting the “Head and reverse” together on one impression, exhibited by these examples, was described a couple of times by William Tassie in his letters — 3W 27 Oct 1801, “I take every possible care to get good Moulds I take them all myself – the way of putting Head & Reverse together is very much approved of -” and in 24W 19 Sep 1812, “putting the Head & reverse together requires very considerable attention – and has always been done by my own hand. “
• Lastly, and probably most convincingly, is the fact that William Tassie in his letters indicated that most, if not all, of the Greek city coin impressions came from the Hunter collection. This is important because 6 out of 8 of the coin impressions were found in the three volume set of the “CATALOGUE OF GREEK COINS IN THE HUNTERIAN COLLECTION UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW”  Vol I  Vol II  Vol III  which includes both text descriptions and photographic images. One impression, particularly, can be positively identified because the coin had been pierced, which detail shows clearly in the impression and in the catalogue’s image.

All that remains now is a trip to the Scottish National Galleries in Edinburgh to, hopefully, witness first hand the coin impressions donated to them by William Tassie in his Estate.  I sure hope they are similar, if not identical to ours.

The following are images with brief descriptions of the nine Tassie Coin Impressions in our collection.  Hoover on an image and click on the “Detail” button to be taken to the page with background information specific to that impression.