The E-Sylum:  Volume 11, Number 5, February 3, 2008, Article 24

MY MOTHER POSED AS BRITANNIA - RECOLLECTIONS OF DESIGNER IRONSIDE'S DAUGHTER

[The Daily Mail ran a GREAT article about the artist
responsible for the current 50p Britannia design, and the
model who posed for him.  See "My mother posed as Britannia,
with a ruler for a trident".  Here are some excerpts.
-Editor]

What I most remember about my father designing the decimal
coins in 1962 was the secrecy surrounding it all.

As an artist – he was a painter and taught life-drawing at
the Royal College of Art – he'd been chosen as one of many
designers to submit designs to a Royal Mint Committee, but
decimalisation had not been announced and it was essential
that no one knew anything about it.

I was a bolshie teenager living upstairs in our house in
South Kensington, my grandmother lived in the basement and
my stepmother was looking after two tiny daughters.

One of the girls got up early one the morning and was found
merrily digging a sculpture tool into one of the plasters
my father had been painstakingly working on.

Eventually, one day two friends saw the casts. "You're
designing decimals!" they said. "You haven't seen a thing,"
growled my father. "If you say anything, they'll put me in
the Tower!"

My 39-year-old half-brother's name is Christian Decimus
Ironside, in tribute to the coins.

I remember my father explaining why he never signed his
coins. "There are three reasons really," he said.

"The first is that it would spoil the design of the coin.
The second is that it's arrogant."

And the third, he said fixing a small cigar into a long
black holder, "is that it is even more arrogant not to
sign them."

To read the complete article, see:
Full Story

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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