Beyond the Mint Museum's Cabinets and Exhibits

By Barrie Renwick, FRCNA, FCNRS

The Royal Mint Museum is much more than a place with cabinets of artifacts on display; it promotes activities its visitors can participate in to learn and understand the history and making of coins and medals. And for the academically inclined it offers superior services to researchers.

My lifelong interest in numismatics redirected during my retirement years into researching and writing about coins and medals that I’ve had or ones I’ve been attracted to. I’m Canadian and a member of our national numismatic association and our numismatic research society, a Fellow of each and a contributor of articles to their publications. Many of my articles have been about medals and the medallists who designed them. In my writing years, I’ve had several readers invite me to research an item in their collection. Recently a collector’s request about his item with connection to the Royal Mint prompted me to ask the Mint Museum whether it had information about this object made for Canada.

The item was a pattern medal made almost a hundred years ago for Canada’s government. Yes, the Museum’s responder replied; it had examples in its collection and I got given information from its files. Most helpfully the writer went further, telling me that National Archives, Kew, has a certain Mint file, likely to have much of the detail I sought. That file was a trove; it also prompted me asking more questions of the Museum staff. In the back-and-forth communication I was delighted to find that the replies showed personal interest in my project and in several instances answers to my questions had ongoing information that the writer anticipated being of significance to my quest.

I was also given links to information sources I could find helpful, and I was invited to browse the Museum’s website, which I did with pleasure seeing pictures of several staff members, the building’s eye-catching exterior, its interior layout and its entertaining art objects.

My article for that pattern medal is underway. It will be richer in its detail for Canadian collectors than I had envisioned. That’s due to the attention and support given to my research by the Museum’s staff members cheerfully responding in a way the website promotes. In appreciation, I’ve offered Guest Articles a short story about the Irish “Barnyard Collection” of coins. These coins were produced in the Royal Mint.