The Royal Mint is to feature a ‘snapshot’ of London’s Trafalgar Square on a limited-edition £100 fine silver commemorative coin – the third in a collection celebrating some of Britain’s most familiar landmarks and monuments.
Royal Mint Coin Designers Glyn Davies (View Designer’s Profile) and Laura Clancy (View Designer’s Profile) spent time in Trafalgar Square capturing sketches and images to gain inspiration for their joint design, which places one of Edwin Landseer’s lions in the foreground with Nelson’s Column in distance, conveying a sense of space and scale. Intended to convey a visitor’s eye ‘snapshot’ view of the world-famous landmark, the pair modeled their design in clay rather than traditional plaster, creating a more fluid, sketch-like appearance.
The Trafalgar Square coin, containing two full ounces of .999 fine silver, is not designed to be spent and will not be entering general circulation; this is because it is part of a special collection created in a Brilliant Uncirculated ‘mint condition’ finish designed to be a limited-edition collectable, to highlight the craftsmanship of The Royal Mint’s designers, engravers and toolmakers. Following on from the launch of the popular Big Ben and Buckingham Palace coins, only 45,000 are to be minted, each available at the price of £100.
Director of Commemorative Coin Anne Jessopp said: “We are excited to be launching the latest in the £100 fine silver coin collection, bearing Glyn and Laura’s almost photographic treatment of their design to great effect.”
The first £100 coin featuring ‘Big Ben’ was well received when it was announced to the world in December 2014, proving a sell-out success within days, and the Buckingham Palace £100 coin was received with equal warmth.
The Designers
Laura Clancy studied three-dimensional crafts at the University of Brighton and previously taught art and metalwork. Her individual projects for The Royal Mint include a coin to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the First World War and the Remembrance Day 2014 Alderney £5 coin.
Glyn Davies worked as an animator before gaining a Master’s Degree in Post Production at Bournemouth University. He worked as a set designer, video editor and motion graphic designer before joining The Royal Mint, where his projects have included a medal for the Zoological Society and the Remembrance Day 2015 Alderney £5 coin.
Laura Clancy said:
“We wanted to achieve something quite different to things that had been done before. We modeled in clay rather than the more traditional plaster. This softer material allowed us to create a more fluid model, more like a sketch than a photo, but in 3D. At The Royal Mint we hand-work all our master-tools, but, for these tools, we added texture, something that would add to the sense of mood and the feeling of weather.”
