Brunei: 1984 independence commemoratives

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Brunei commissioned two coins for its independence commemoratives of 1984.

Royal Mint artist Robert Elderton produced a portrait from the photo supplied.

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The Mint explained that full face portraits are rarely successful on coins.

Brunei then provided a different photo.

Robert Elderton once more created a portrait from the photo.

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Robert Elderton produced a design of an oil rig.

His sketches show two different denominations.

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Robert Elderton produced two amended designs of the coins' layout.

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The issued coin was denominated as 10 dollars.

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Robert Elderton also produced a design for the gold 1000 dollar commemorative coin.

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Robert Elderton's designs for both coins were modelled by artist and sculptor Michael Hibbit.

The issued 1000 dollar design shows a large view of the building.

The indications are that Robert Elderton also produced the amended design.

However, I have no evidence for this.

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It looks a bit like the idea of the design came up before the idea of an independence commemorative. The early designs have no mention of independence, the oil rig is not particularly connected to independence and the date of 1983 is a bit early - though Brunei became independent on 1st January 1984, so plans for independence must have been conceived in 1983. The connection with independence comes about only later, when the design was pretty heavily amended.

Peter