My collection. Art medals. How did that start ?
About 20 years ago a colleague, Mr. Doesberg, offered us a medal, it was beautiful art deco, by a famous dutch designer and the subject was theatre. I was blown away, all I loved was within that little gem.
silver medal by / zilveren penning door: Chris van der Hoef, Antigone 1921 Arnhem - Den Haag
At that moment Jaap found the price to high. So no deal.
Mr. Doesberg drank his regular tea and perhaps two more and left with the medal.
Bye bye!
The moment he shut the shopdoor behind him, I shouted out loud:
"Why didn't you buy that medal ! I wanted that medal ! You miser !"
Jaap responded very calm: "It's just a coin. What do we need a coin for ?"
Me: "It's not a coin !!! It's a medal, a piece of art, it's art deco, it's by Chris van der Hoef, it's theatre !!!"
Sob sob.
About 3-4 weeks later it was my birthday, Jaap came to our shop, he gave me a present and it was the medal.
Kiss kiss.
Kiss kiss.
Of course he had to pay a lot more, because Mr. Doesberg had already sold it on and Jaap had to buy it from that other dealer.
Tough, tough.
Shortly after that I saw an other art medal and bought it, 2 - 10 - 40 and so on.
Jaap kept saying: "What do you want to do with thoose coins?"
After several years, I had collected about 100, and then I decided the collection was good and big enough to show. I sold some and bought some more.
It's not wise dealership, there are only a few collectors,
but it's love love love and very very very nice to do.
silver art medal by / zilveren penning door: Gerrit Rietveld, 1926, Horemheb - Ichnaton
Always I just wanted to collect only dutch medals, made by well known dutch designers, artists and sculptors, starting at 1900 up to the present. Just to keep in an area I can learn and know about a lot.
Sometimes though an extremely beautiful piece can make me decide to go abroad
silver medal by Louis Oscar Roty, Death of Sadi Carnot, assassinated president of France 1894
There are so many wonderful art nouveau medals from France, Belgium and Germany, designed by great sculptors, for example Roty, Charpentier, Dupuis, Dubois, Coudray, Chaplain, Pillet, etc.
After the art nouveau period the art deco began, and to my opion, the most beautiful, powerful, topdesigned art deco medal ever made is American:
designed in 1933, by Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958) for the 25th anniversary of General Motors:
More medals can be seen on our site: www.delta98.nl
pictures: delta 98 den haag archive
tekst: Marx Warmerdam
