Medallic Art Collector

A quick note first: a new version of this site is now available in public beta. It does not yet have all the medals that are on this site, but it has many additional medals and a much better index than this version of the site. Take a look!

Welcome to Medallic Art Collector, a personal portal for information on Medallic Art. "Medallic Art" can be interpreted to refer to the products of the Medallic Art Company (MACO), historically one of the finest American manufacturers of art in medal form. More generically, "Medallic Art" refers to any medal-shaped bas-relief object of some artistic value.

Sadly, the latter definition rules out many medallic objects that might be collectible but, at least in my opinion, have very little artistic merit. While the Medallic Art Company created some of the finest examples of medallic art, it also created a lot of the bread-and-butter rounds that kept it and the medals' sculptors able to pay their bills. Most of these latter pieces will not be represented on this site. Just because a series is missing does not necessarily imply that I have excluded it or find it lacking artistic merit. It might just mean that I don't have enough information yet or that I am focusing on content that is more important to me.

The focus of this site is definitely on 20th Century and current American art medals. There are already many sites that focus on famous European medalists, but there are surprisingly few sites that deal with their American counterparts. Many American sculptors are recognized for their contributions to the decorative arts or to architectural sculpture, yet their efforts as medalists are not similarly appreciated. It is for this reason I created this website. Foreign sculptors are not excluded though: any foreign artist who was associated with an American medal series can also be represented here. Interesting modern art medal sculptors from all over the world can also find a home here. I admit that I am partial to medals with industrial subjects that might not always live up to the high standards of a Manship or French. I hope you don't find these medals too distracting.

This effort just got under way and the gaps in content are large. I am adding both content and site functionality as fast as I can. Visit again a few weeks from now and see whether a click on a medal or a sculptor produces additional information. I want to make this site useful, not just to me but to the wider collectors' community. To that effect:

• Let me know what works and what does not, what you like and what not, and what is missing. Telling me that you care about a particular artist might make me prioritize the work on that artist's page.
• Work with me if you are a descendant of one of the artists and have information you would like to share. Too many of the wonderful medallic artists are not as well known as they should be and deserve to have their stories told.
• Contribute content in the form of high resolution images of your medals or images and narrative about artists and their works. I am always looking for original content to make the sculptors come to life.
• Support my efforts through a small donation if you feel like it.
• Send me source material that I am missing or correct false information. I will give full credit where credit is due.
• Help me complete my collection by offering your medals to me. If I don't have a picture of a medal on the site, I probably don't have the medal in my collection and I'm interested in buying. You can probably get a better price from me than from a dealer or on eBay, once you take the commission into account.

The items and the information presented here reflect my tastes, preferences, and access to source material. You can probably find other sites with overlapping areas of interest and opposite opinions and better sourced data. I hope that you will still find the information and the tools on this site useful and help me improve it.

I appreciate all feedback and will do my best to respond.

Use the icon in the top left corner to bring up a menu that takes you to different parts of the website or the other menubar icons. I expect that many of you will eventually find specific pages via search engines and that you will only have to navigate infrequently. Nevertheless, a few tips on searching because this site has a lot of content that you might not be aware of because search engines don't always rank this site very highly. In particular, you can often identify a medal easily by typing in an inscription or part of an inscription and then limiting your search to this website to separate the wheat from the chaff.

• To search specifically on this site, you can add the following to your search query: site:medallicartcollector.com. This makes sure that the search engine only shows you results are part of this web site. If I had a bigger budget for the site I would pay Google for a site search box, but that's out of the question for now.
• When you click through to a search result, please remember that the content might be in one of the other tabs on the page. Google often shows you the biographical section when the keywords are really located on the medal section. Click the Medals tab and then use your browser's "Find" function if there are too many medals on the page to locate the desired one quickly.

This site is copyrighted. Please do not reuse images, code, or language without permission.