Coin Cabinets and Numismatic Books

Kitchener, Frances Madge, ‘Mint Coinage: The Coins and Coinage, Working Drawings’, a self-titled green cloth and board binding containing a group of sketch designs and original artist’s pen and ink drawings for proposed 1937 and 1953 British coinages, together with some photographic images of various coins and medals, many annotated by the artist, contemporary newspaper cuttings and correspondence between Kitchener (using her real name and ‘M. Francis’, a nom-de-plume), Lionel Thompson, Deputy Master of the Royal Mint, and Graham Hughes, Art Director at Goldsmiths’ Hall, between March and July 1952 [Lot]. Mostly clean, a unique and intriguing group £300-£400 --- Frances Madge Kitchener, RRC (1889-1974), niece of Herbert Kitchener; b Kasauli, India; served as a nurse in the French Red Cross, 1914-20; studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in the 1920s; designer of the British brass threepence. The reverse design of a thrift plant, or sea-pink, originated from a set of sketches submitted by Kitchener in June 1936 for the new silver threepence of Edward VIII (the sketches are not included in the lot). However, the decision had been taken to phase out the small silver coin and replace it with a new nickel-brass piece, the exact shape and size of which was being debated by the Royal Mint Advisory Committee during the summer of 1936. Following the decision to make the coin 12-sided, Miss Kitchener submitted a further model in September 1936. Trial pieces of various thicknesses were struck and used to test the reaction of interested parties, like slot machine manufacturers (Dyer, p.23). Kitchener’s subsequent efforts to have her designs shortlisted for Elizabeth II’s new coins proved unsuccessful and the rejection letters from the Royal Mint, along with her proposed designs, are included with the lot. A request from Graham Hughes, chairman of the Coronation Medals Panel, for a plaster model of a coronation medal for the new monarch, was rejected: “...time is too short, I am a deliberate worker, and seventeen days...is not long enough for me to do the medal in...”