MICHAEL ARMITAGE TO DESIGN NEW POUND COIN

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V25 2022 INDEX E-SYLUM ARCHIVE

The E-Sylum: Volume 25, Number 20, May 15, 2022, Article 23

David Pickup passed along this article about the Royal College of Art's announcement of a planned new design from the Royal Mint for the reverse of the standard circulating one pound coin. The new design itself has not been revealed yet. The image shows one of the previous reverse designs. The obverse, of course, displays the Queen. -Editor

Artist Michael Armitage will design a new £1 coin which will enter circulation next year, Chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced.

The new design for the reverse or tails side of the coin will mark its 40th anniversary and it will be revealed later this year.

During a Royal College of Art's (RCA) reception on Tuesday, Mr Sunak announced that Mr Armitage's new design will celebrate the culture, creativity, and heritage and history of the UK in the 21st century.

Mr Armitage said: It is a great privilege to have the opportunity to collaborate with the Royal Mint on the design of the new £1 coin.

It is an honour to be part of the lineage of coin-making in the United Kingdom and I am grateful to the Chancellor and the selection panel for the opportunity to contribute to this history in considering what it is to be part of Great Britain today.

Chief executive of the Royal Mint Anne Jessopp said: The £1 coin is a symbol of Britain that is recognised around the world.

Mr Armitage was born in 1984 in Nairobi, Kenya, and lives and works between London and Nairobi. Earlier this year, the Royal Academy of Arts, London, elected him a Royal Academician in the category of painting.

He was chosen by the Chancellor on advice provided by an independent panel with expertise in coin design and art.

The 1983 £1 coin was fully redesigned in 2017, including the introduction of new security features.

"There is not much on this story about a commemoration of forty years of the pound coin which replaced the banknote. The modern twelve sided version is probably much better than the first designs. At one point it was estimated that 3% of the old pound coins in circulation were fake."

Thanks! We'll await more information on the new design. The article does say the new coin will incorporate anticounterfeiting features. -Editor

The design will become the standard circulating £1 coin and will include the current world-leading high-security features to protect against counterfeiting, the Treasury said.

Here's a Royal Academy article with more information on the artist. -Editor

In his paintings Armitage weaves together his experiences in Kenya and current events with contemporary East African art and European art history. With his multi-layered narrative paintings, Armitage questions social norms, religious ideology, politics and cultural clichés.

Armitage was born to a Yorkshireman father and Kikuyu mother, spending his childhood in East Africa before training as an artist in Britain.

He has since described his education at the Slade School of Fine Art and the Royal Academy Schools as stripping everything back to the basics and building it back up again, which was essential, if not enjoyable.

His work has been influenced by these years of studying Western art history, and particularly by Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Francisco Goya, Edouard Manet and Titian, but is grounded in East Africa and inspired by artists such as Jak Katarikawe, Chelenge van Rampelberg and Meek Gichugu.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
A beginner's guide to Michael Armitage (https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/michael-armitage-beginners-guide)