VANHOUDT WINS 2016 PNG FRIEDBERG AWARD

PREV ARTICLE NEXT ARTICLE FULL ISSUE PREV FULL ISSUE

V19 2016 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 19, Number 36, September 4, 2016, Article 10

Friedberg Award Committee Chairman Jim Simek made the following presentation at the Professional Numismatists Guild annual awards banquet on August 8, 2016:

The Friedberg Award is the oldest of the many honors that the Professional Numismatists Guild confers. Inaugurated in 1963, the award is named for distinguished numismatic writer and publisher Robert Friedberg. It is presented to an author judged to have produced a significant numismatic work during the previous 12 months, though it has not been given every year.

Several outstanding submissions were received this year, and the committee would like to thank each of the individuals who sent in their work for consideration. The decision, as is usually the case, was not an easy one to make.

This year's recipient is a gentleman from Heverlee, Belgium. His work is the product of many, many years of research and effort, and expands greatly and complements the last volume on the subject published in 1960.

Therefore, on behalf of the P.N.G., I am pleased to present the 2016 Robert Friedberg Award - for his work The Coins of the Burgundian, Spanish and Austrian Low Countries and of the French and Dutch Periods, 1434 to 1830 - to Hugo Vanhoudt. Our congratulations are extended to this worthy and very deserving individual.

This book seeks to complement and update the seminal work Les monnaies des Pays-Bas bourguignons et espagnols by H. Enno Van Gelder & Marcel Hoc (Amsterdam, 1960). It provides an overview of the centralized coinage in the Low Countries, from 1434 to 1830. The first year is based on the Ordinance of January 23, 1434, whereby Philip the Good organized a uniform coinage in his territories — the latter year coincides with the end of the common coinage under William I, King of the United Netherlands, due to the proclamation of the independence of Belgium in 1830.

Administratively, Philip the Good’s territory was larger than the territory of the current Netherlands and Belgium combined. Since the souvereign usually stayed in Flanders or Brabant, they spoke of ‘countries hither about’ or ‘les pays de par deça’, being the surrounding and adjacent areas, and the ‘countries thither about’ or ‘les pays de par dela’, being the Burgundian territories in France.

The coinage in the Low Countries is described here in the broadest sense with regard to the administrative territory (including Burgundy), and includes all the official emissions made by the reigning monarch, the obsidional coins in this period, and other special emissions such as piedforts, presentation coins, etc. The aim is to combine as much information as possible in this work. Additions and corrections to this book will be available at www.hugovanhoudt.be.

This book is the result of years of effort and could not have been brought to a good end without the help of many people who have assisted me in several ways, even small, by letting me visit their collection, by providing me information and illustrations, etc.

My most sincere thanks go to the many numismatists, collectors and public institutions which have helped me, and especially to Mr. Jan Moens, who has displayed an inexhaustible energy in attacking the many layout tasks I have given to him; without him, this book would never have been published.