The E-Sylum:  Volume 8, Number 54, December 25, 2005, Article 4

ANOTHER BURDETT BOOK ENDORSEMENT

Dick Johnson writes: "I would like to echo Dave Lange's
praise of Roger Burdette's book on American coinage,
recently published. The first of his planned numismatic
trifecta covering American coinage at the beginning of
the 20th century, "Renaissance of American Coinage 1916-1921"
covers the third phase; the next two books will cover two
previous phases. This period of American coinage is so
important, and so little known, that Roger is doing a
tremendous service to American numismatics by revealing
the people and events which led to the turn around -
Roger calls it a "renaissance" - in American coin design.

What happened? We got away from the stiff style of the
Barber-Morgan influence of coin design. These men were
engravers, they prepared their coin designs in small size.
They experimented with many small size designs (why so many
patterns exist) to choose only those that came up to their
satisfaction. This resulted in mediocre coin designs.

To their credit, Treasury officials turned instead to
American sculptors to create new coin designs. No small
designs these. These artists - St-Gaudens, Weinman, Fraser,
MacNeil, de Francisci - created oversize models which were
pantographically reduced. These artists applied a style of
design -- beaux arts -- to American coin design. It was so
successful we are replicating those same designs today,
recycling Weinman's Liberty Walking and Fraser's Bison,
for example.

To his credit, Roger Burdette searched out the original
documents to tell the story of these events as factual and
accurately as possible. He hit the archives and touched the
original documents. The present volume is strong on the
story of de Francisci's Peace dollar, and adequately covers
Weinman's two Liberty designs plus Fraser's Bison nickel
and MacNeil's quarter. Future collectors and writers on
these series will have to include this issue of Roger's
books in their study - it is that important.

I highly recommend Roger's book. The boxes around the
quotations from the original documents is a little
disconcerting and the index could be in larger type for
these old eyes. Hey, that's all I could find to harp about.

I have had correspondence with Roger over the years. I was
proud to recommend he subscribe to E-Sylum (recorded in the
first 2004 issue). He has contributed several insightful
articles since. He's the caliber of the big guns we have
reading and contributing to The E-Sylum.

Merry Christmas to All you big guns from Dick Johnson."

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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