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V4 2001 INDEX       E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 4, Number 39, September 23, 2001, Article 8 LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS ON THE CARNEGIE HERO MEDALS. Dick Johnson writes: "Few numismatists know the background on the Carnegie Hero Medal. After the Carnegie Medal Committee was established in 1904 they chose Charles Osborne, a virtual unknown artist -- then and still! -- to design the medal. He did this and patented the design in his name 11 December 1905. To manufacture the medal the Committee chose J.E. Caldwell Jewelry firm of Philadelphia (perhaps with an office then in Pittsburgh where the committee was located). While Caldwell had made badges prior to 1905 (no medals), their work was not in the same class with the medallic productions of Tiffany or Gorham of New York City. (Medallic Art Company was not in existence in 1905.) Osborne's design was modeled by Charles F. Hamann, another little-known artist, and since Caldwell did not have diemaking equipment, they commissioned Whiting Manufacturing Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, to make the Carnegie Medal dies. Caldwell struck the medals, in 1905 and ever since to my knowledge. Interestingly enough, Andrew Carnegie established similar funds in other countries, with locally-produced Hero Medals. [See the Country list on the Committee's website.] The Italian version of the Carnegie Hero Medal is a stunning work of medallic art with the best portrait of Carnegie I have ever seen. (Oh, if only the American version was as handsome!) The American medal design was pedestrian, uninspired. Decades later Medallic Art Company offered to replace their Carnegie medal with a far more artistic medallic work of art. I remember the vice president of sales futile comment after returning from a meeting with the Committee, "the proposal fell on deaf ears of a bunch of lawyers sitting in an office in Pittsburgh!" The American Numismatic Society acquired an American Carnegie Hero Fund Medal specimen for their collections in 1908. The U.S. Mint Collection had received a specimen perhaps as early and was recorded and cataloged by Thomas Louis Comparette in the 1912 edition of his "Catalogue of Coins, Tokens, and Medals in the Numismatic Collection of the Mint of the United States at Philadelphia." (The Mint Collection was ultimately transferred to the Smithsonian Institution for the National Numismatic Collection in 1923.) For numismatic bibliophiles, David Gladfelter's article, "A Tribute to Heroes: The Carnegie Medal" in the TAMS Journal (June 1975, pages 93-94), is quite interesting (and is the only numismatic reference in the Bibliography on the Committee's website)."

Wayne Homren, Editor

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