FALLEN HEROES MEDAL DESIGN: VAULTED PERSPECTIVE

How refreshing to see the design of the latest Congressional Gold Medal, the Fallen Heroes of New York Medal. It is different from the usual.

To honor the thousands killed in the September 11 twin towers disaster something different was required. It bears the perspective of looking up from ground level as the new towers rise above. The design is the creation of the talented coin and medal artist Joel Iskowitz, a long-time member of the U.S. Mint's stable of commissioned and infusion artists.

"The subject required something different," Joel tells me. He employed the seldom used art technique of change of perspective to achieve that effect. It is not completely new in U.S. Mint medals however, as Chester Martin employed this technique on an earlier Mint medal.

To the human eye looking up where tall buildings emerge toward the center is a realistic perspective. It is like railroad tracks come to a point in the distance. The first such use of this perspective I recall was an Israeli medal of a forest with tree tops coming together in the center of the medal.

Another dramatic design was a patient's view on an operating table looking up into overhead lights and surgeons' masked faces on a Paris Mint medal. The opposite of this is looking down on a scene, like a bird's eye view, widely used for map medals, or a layout of exposition grounds for a world's fair.

These perspectives have technical names. Looking up is called vaulted perspective, looking down is called aerial perspective.

The normal view is called linear perspective, so common it is hardly noticed. Point your finger at a scene or person. What you see down your arm in that view is linear perspective. Most all coin and medal designs are this perspective that is why it is so refreshing to see a change of perspective.

For the coin or medal cataloger any different perspective should be mentioned in a formal description. No need to mention linear perspective, it is so common.

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