New Coin Design For The National Government of China

亚高

(1931) 年孫中山紀念幣系列冊。為了國民政府發行的新錢幣而設計。赫維德設計。

China, Dr. Sun Yat-sen (1866-1925), Provisional First President of the Republic, 1912; Premier of the Kuomintang of China, 1919-1925; New Coin Design For The National Government of China by Clifford Hewitt, Jan. 10, 1931 (original) (Confidential), a small 10 page commercial album (made by The J. L. Hanson Co. Chicago), numbered 1, containing images of coin designs, each mounted on a separate page, with a caption below; most pages interleaved with tissue. The images are photographic from original plain designs but added inked legends. The designs are for the then-new Central Mint at Shanghai.


One Sun obverse – bust of Sun Yat-sen l., in high-collared jacket, seven-character legend and date (year 18), signed HS by shoulder

One Sun reverse – a two-sailed junk sails to r., on calm sea, characters r. and l., for ‘One Yuan’, rays, but no sun, of rising sun, floral and wheat sprays above.

One Sun reverse – a two-sailed junk sails to r., on a calm sea, characters r. and l., for ‘One Yuan’, rays, but no sun, of rising sun, three wild geese fly above

One Sun reverse – a two-sailed junk sails to r., on a calm sea showing shadows of sails, characters r. and l., for ‘One Yuan’, rays, but no sun, of rising sun, a flight of multiple wild geese fly above

Ten Cents reverse – a centrally-pierced coin with floral branches around hole and value in two characters

Ten Cents obverse – legend and date within border around hole (year 21), 12-pointed star in outer border above (tissue missing)

Twenty Cents obverse – bust of Sun Yat-sen l., in high collared jacket, seven-character legend and date (year 18), 3 spots by shoulder, perhaps removing designer’s initials (tissue missing)

Half Sun reverse – a two-sailed junk sails to r., on a calm sea showing shadows of sails, value characters r. and l., rays, but no sun, of rising sun, a flight of multiple wild geese fly above (tissue missing)

Twenty Cents reverse – a two-sailed junk sails to r., on a calm sea showing shadows of sails, value characters r. and l., rays, but no sun, of rising sun, a flight of multiple wild geese fly above (tissue missing)

Twenty Cents reverse – a two-sailed junk sails to r., on a calm sea, value characters r. and l., rays, but no sun, of rising sun, three wild geese fly above (tissue missing)

The mints of five foreign nations - USA, Austria, Italy, Great Britain and Japan - had been asked to supply models for a uniform Sun Yat-sen dollar (Kann p. 196) but whilst none were accepted as presented, a modified Italian design was adopted.

Clifford Hewitt’s role has been explained by David Hill in his article, Clifford Hewitt: International Man of Mystery? ANS Magazine, 1 September 2013 and the cataloguers acknowledge its help in preparing the present description.

In 1977 the dealer F. S. (Fred) Werner gifted to the ANS a number of documents and papers relating to Hewitt and it was these that formed the source material for Hill’s article.

Hewitt was chief mechanical engineer for the U.S. mint - a machinist and not an engraver. He was born in Hazelton, Pennsylvania, in 1869, son and grandson of pioneering railroad engineers. He graduated from the Franklin Institute of Mechanical Engineering in Philadelphia in 1893.

In 1900 Hewitt was a ‘mechanical expert in charge of building and equipping the new mint at Philadelphia’. He built and installed mint exhibits at the St. Louis Exposition of 1904 and the Panama-Pacific Exposition at San Francisco in 1915.

It was his work on the installation and opening, in 1920, of the mint in Manilla (the only branch of the U.S. Mint to have operated outside the continental United States) that caught the attention of the Chinese. He was invited to draw up plans for a central mint to be built at Shanghai, a project to which he devoted the next twelve years of his life.

He is credited with choosing the site on the Suzhou Creek, with its ideal rail and water access and proximity to the Shanghai banking centre, and for insisting that it be built outside of the International Settlement, a trading zone occupied and administered by foreign interests. Although the mint was completed in 1930, production was delayed by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the ‘January 28’ or ‘Shanghai’ incident.

Hewitt certainly considered himself the designer of both the Completion Medal of 1930 and the new dollar coin which shared its most prominent design features: ‘I completed the Chinese Mint and put it into full operation March 1933, with a coin designed by myself with Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s profile on the obverse and a typical Chinese junk on the reverse, which is now the coinage of the Chinese Government’.

The dies were however cut by the Philadelphia Mint. The design was to prove a disaster as the three geese (or perhaps seagulls), were taken to represent Japanese planes and the sun rays were also, of course, the symbol of the Land of the Rising Sun.

迷中迷

New Coin Design

亚高

迷中迷 发表于 2019-6-12 06:35
New Coin Design

I think these auction items are original design, the 3 birds over is the most beautiful edition.