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INSPIRATIONS FOR THE MORGAN DOLLAR DESIGN
I collect French coins and I found the article “The Girl On The Silver Dollar” interesting. Many years ago I bought an 1850 French “Ceres Head” 5 Francs in a Stack's/Coin Galleries auction. It was the first French coin in that collection...I loved the design and it got me started collecting French coinage. There are stories that the “Ceres Design” inspired George Morgan in his design for the silver dollar....who knows? Well, on p12 of Roger Burdette's new book, he discusses Morgan's design influences. With permission we're republishing that section here. -Editor "His training was, like so many artists of the day, grounded in copying classical models with a strong emphasis on French interpretation. The half dollar's Liberty of 1876 could have easily been based on dozens of classical and French examples, such as the pattern 5 franc obverse of 1851 shown below, left."    "Figure 2. Sample of French coin designs by Jean-Baptiste Eugène Farochon (1848, left) and Eugène André Oudiné (1868, center) typical of the style learned by Morgan and brought to his earliest American coin and medal work." The design influences are clearly there, but artists generally use that history as a starting point and branch off from there. Often multiple images, designs and models will influence each new work in both obvious and subtle ways. -Editor To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
 Wayne Homren, Editor The Numismatic Bibliomania Society is a non-profit organization promoting numismatic literature. See our web site at coinbooks.org. To submit items for publication in The E-Sylum, write to the Editor at this address: whomren@gmail.com To subscribe go to: https://my.binhost.com/lists/listinfo/esylum All Rights Reserved. NBS Home Page Contact the NBS webmaster 
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