Comments on "Christine Ellingham, coin designer"

[<k>]

Parent topic:  Christine Ellingham, coin designer.

The parent topic (above) provides an overview of the work of retired coin designer Christine Ellingham.

Please post any comments, questions or corrections here.

[<k>]

My thanks to Christine Ellingham, who spent some time explaining her career to me and identifying a few more of her coin designs.

Christine paints and draws but does not sculpt. Therefore an engraver at the Royal Mint modelled her work as it appeared on the minted coins. Sometimes the modellers made their own amendments, and after the passage of so many years, it was not always possible for Christine to identify some designs as her own. Additionally, not all her suggested designs were minted, which is quite usual, of course.

Last night I was trying to find one of Christine's designs from her sketches. Our forum member eurocoin immediately recognised her design as a Westminster Collection medal that celebrated the Queen's Golden Jubilee in 2002.



Sketches by Christine Ellingham.



Golden Jubilee medal 2002.

[<k>]

Our forum member eurocoin also found a set of eighteen Gibraltar 5 pound coins, on the Olympics theme of Return to Athens, that were issued in 2004 and 2005. They were all designed by Christine Ellingham. I will post images of those coins in the main topic when I find them. Before that, I will post images of Christine's sketches of those designs in the Unrealised designs board. I will provide a link to that topic once it is finished.

[Figleaf]

I find this thread really interesting. As you note, designing artists are usually sculptors, not painters, working in 2 dimensions and using light and shadow to suggest depth. I wonder now if there are other artists used to working in 2D. I know of one designer who worked as a photographer before making his only successful coin design: Bruno Ninaber van Eyben. Is Matthew Dent another example?

I'd be interested in what others think about the depth of the designs. In spite of the intervention of a sculpture, is it too flat? About right? Hard to tell?

Peter

[<k>]

Most artists learn to draw before they sculpt. Sculpting is a more difficult skill. But you will see from my many posts in the Unrealised Designs board that skilful sculptors, such as Robert Elderton, do draw an initial sketch before progressing to a model.

If somebody can only draw or paint, then they must entrust their design to a sculptor and hope that he/she does it justice. In any case, I understand that modern designs are done on the computer. Stuart Devlin, for instance, learned how to use CAD/CAM for his later designs. Some designers are not satisfied with the results. One designer who can and does sculpt told me that one of his designs was entrusted to another sculptor, merely because of lack of time. The original designer was less than pleased with the way the sculptor portrayed the rugby ball in his design, which he found to be particularly unrealistic. This pained him, because he was a big fan of and player of rugby!

Many of the Royal Mint coin designs, by people who cannot sculpt, we see have been sculpted by Robert Elderton or Gordon Summers of Matt Bonaccorsi. Look at Christine Ellingham's design on the left, below, and compare it against the minted coin. The design looks more than adequate as minted.

[<k>]

Guernsey, 1 pound, 1997.  Tower of London.

Christine Ellingham told me that she had provided sketches for the Guernsey 1997 castle and towers series of collector coins. She emailed me: "Often, Westminster Collection would only require a pencil or ink outline from me, so the end result as a coin would look quite different, even though the basic design would be the same." When I showed her images of the issued Guernsey designs, she said that the castle designs were definitely not hers, but possibly the Tower of London was her design, though she was not sure. This might have been because of the passage of time, or maybe the sculptor had made such major amendments to her design that she no longer recognised it as fully her design.

[Figleaf]

I understand your argument, <k>, but that's not quite what I am after. I am happy to see the UK mint as a semi-commercial organisation that has a number of priorities, like delivering on time, so that one person's work is passed on to another to be finished.

My point is different. Ms. Ellingham had a career as an illustrator for children's and fashion publications. Nothing wrong with that. It does come through in her work, in particular in the designs made of princess Diana, in a way everyone's fairy princess or fashion model. Those designs are IMO particularly two-dimensional, eminently suited for a print publication. The advantage of a sketch is that a few lines are enough for the human brain to fill in the gaps and construct the picture the sculptor must make in its entirety. In other words, neiter the sketch nor the painting can be used as is. I wonder if others also see it that way or it's one of my prejudices.



Quite another subject is the likeness of portraits. We both know that this is a major challenge. Many a computer portrait or sculpted portrait fails completely because the light plays havoc with the sculptor's intentions. This is all the more important because humans are in general really good at not only recognising faces, but also at interpreting the mood of the owner of the face. Making a sketch or painting invites mental interpretation, but the sculptor will have to leave nothing to the imagination. Compare the sketch below with the final outcome in metal, especially the neck (three strokes on the sketch) and the forehead (two strokes, not retained).





I am not looking for easy opinions without arguments, but for thoughtful considerations on can a 2D-artist make a design that can be used directly on a coin. If it helps you, I think they can, provided that the design is abstract enough, which, I gather, was not the case for Ms. Ellingham, but it was for Ninaber van Eyben and Matthew Dent. However, I am inviting other opinions.

Peter

[<k>]

I am not looking for easy opinions without arguments, but for thoughtful considerations on can a 2D-artist make a design that can be used directly on a coin. If it helps you, I think they can, provided that the design is abstract enough, which, I gather, was not the case for Ms. Ellingham, but it was for Ninaber van Eyben and Matthew Dent. However, I am inviting other opinions.

No coin is 2D, so 2D designs cannot be used directly on coins. They would have to be etched rather than sculpted. Even Ninaber van Eyben's cartoonish outlines of the Dutch queen are sculpted and raised above the surface of the coin.






Matthew Dent's 2D designs had a lot of engraving work done to them before they were acceptable as coin designs.



Look at the lifeless portrait of the Sultan of Brunei above. Now compare it to Christine Ellingham's sketch of the Queen Mother. She has made the Queen Mother instantly recognisable and brought out her humanity, with an expression, a pose, and the little additional details that people can relate to. Christine has the gift of presentation and makes her subjects look alive. The sculptor then copies her work into his version of 3D, but he needs a lot of technical artistic flair to do so. He fills in details, such as the curls of the hair, but the spirit of the design remains recognisably Christine's. What the sculptor lacks is the ideas that Christine and other artists have, otherwise he would do all the designs himself. So you must consider the sculptor and artist as a team. No 2D design can ever be translated directly into a design - even the abstract ones need the skill of the sculptor.



Ninaber van Eyben's design.

[Figleaf]

Ninaber van Eyben's design was not sculpted. It was computerised. I wouldn't be surprised at all if some of Dent's designs (e.g. the WWF commemorative) didn't need sculpting either. What the two have in common is experience with working with flat designs. Dent's specialty is graphic design. Ninaber van Eyben worked as a jeweller.

This thread reminded me that (unlike the spending public) minters have good reasons to like flat designs. Could that have been a reason why a painter like Ms. Ellingham became quite acceptable?

Remember that a St. Gaudens (sculptor!) design had to be completely re-worked because the relief was so high it was "difficult to strike" (probably meaning too costly for a circulation issue) and "couldn't be properly piled". Basically, the relief was lowered considerably, leaving St. Gaudens loudly unhappy. There are more such examples of sculptors making the relief too high, especially if they had experience as a medallist.

A painter, even if teamed up with a pro (i.e. knowing the relief problem) sculptor working for the mint, wouldn't make or have such problems. Dent's flat icons and Ninaber van Eyben's computer layers would make minters at least as happy as painters.

Peter

[<k>]

Ninaber van Eyben's design was not sculpted. It was computerised. I wouldn't be surprised at all if some of Dent's designs (e.g. the WWF commemorative) didn't need sculpting either.

Yes, computers are commonly used in design these days. However, the computers do not have a mind of their own. They need to be directed by users with experience and understanding of sculpting and of how to express the (semi-) 3D aspect of the struck coin design. So the sculpting or engraving is planned on computer, by humans, and then executed by computer-controlled machines. Therefore all of Dent's designs did indeed need to be engraved. I read somewhere Dent's own account about how much work went into that with an experienced Royal Mint engraver. After all, those UK designs are not flat. They are not just etched onto the surface of the coin. Though I dislike the theme of our current UK coins, I think their texturing is superb. See the 5 pence below. And do not tell me that Dent designed the texturing and engraving. He didn't.

What the two have in common is experience with working with flat designs. Dent's specialty is graphic design. Ninaber van Eyben worked as a jeweller.

It matters not whether the designer is a painter or sculptor. A competent sculptor, engraver, computer operator, can take another person's design and ensure that the relief is just right, whether the designer has provided a model or a painting. In the 1960s the sculptor Cecil Thomas designed the crested crane on the Uganda coinage as a plaster model, then went on holiday. Because he was unavailable, a lowly Royal Mint engraver had to make minor alterations to the design, since parts of the relief would have caused problems. But this was a normal part of the job and what the engraver was there for.

Any sculptor needs artistic flair to do his job, but many Royal Mint sculptors did not design coins. Why not? Probably they lacked the imagination. They were content to provide or alter lettering or the depth of the relief of the coin as needed. Sculptors who could also design, did so. However, I would reckon that sculpting is a rarer skill than painting or drawing. So, if you want a large choice of styles for your coin designs, so that they do not all look the same (like Finland's designs, these days), it is a good idea to invite a range of 2D artists, with lots of ideas, to provide your designs.

I look at it this way: sculpting is analogous to bricklaying. Sculptors do the necessary physical donkey work. Designers are the architects. They provide the imaginative plans that make the different designs. However, sculptors can also be designers, though not all are.

This thread[/url] reminded me that (unlike the spending public) minters have good reasons to like flat designs. Could that have been a reason why a painter like Ms. Ellingham became quite acceptable?

No. Ms. Ellingham's work was acceptable because it was good design. She knew how to present a scene, whether a portrait or a sporting scene, and make it lifelike. She also made her portraits distinctly recognisable. We knew she had portrayed Diana or the Queen Mother, without our needing to ask who those portraits represented. Remember that Ms. Ellingham used to design comic strips. That is an art in itself. She never wrote the stories but had to provide the pictures that move forward the action. There is an art to that, and that is why her designs are lifelike and tell a little story of their own. Look now at some poor and lifeless designs, like that of the Sultan of Brunei above, and then look at one of Ms. Ellingham's designs. The difference is clear: she knows how to present a scene or a portrait and make it come alive.

So a sculptor can take any artist's work and, using his experience, quickly obviate any likely problems. It matters not whether an artist is a 2D or 3D artist. All works can be translated into a coin design. Whether they are a good or bad coin design is usually down to the taste of the person looking at them. Admittedly, I have been disappointed by some of the circulation designs coming out of Gibraltar in recent years, precisely because they have low relief and therefore look poorly struck.



UK 5 pence 2009.