ON COMPARING HAND-ENGRAVING STYLES

Recently I acquired a set of 19th century books, signed by Laura Ingalls (Little House on the Prairie author). The signature matched quite well the images I found online, but the form of her name did not. Young ladies of quality were taught penmanship such that MANY of them wrote pretty much identically.

Alan Weinberg's contention that many of his pieces were engraved by a single hand is plausible, but it is not unlikely a similar phenomenon is at play. Unfortunately (but not earthshakingly), little is known about hand-engraving on coins. Who were the engravers? Were their services available widely? What did they charge?

A key question: How many pieces like Alan's could one engraver do in a day or two? For every piece Alan has, there may be have been many others done that do not survive.

Nonetheless, handwriting experts should be able to determine, in many cases, if two engraved coins are by the same hand, just as they make confident judgments about signatures on paper. In fact, because engraving creates depth, the diagnostics (on unworn examples) may be very strong. Examining pieces in hand, next to each other, would be much better than comparing photographed or pixelated evidence.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see: PETER BERTRAM ON DAVIS FLIGHT MEDALS (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n17a12.html)

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