Minutes of the Meeting of the British Numismatic Society, held at The Society of Antiquaries of London on Monday, 27 March 2023, Dr Screen, President, being in the chair and 60 other people present [25 in person, 35 on Zoom].
The minutes of the meeting held on 27 February 2023 were approved.
NOMINATIONS: Lindsay Hardcastle (London), Peter McClelland (London), Martin Scammell (E. Sussex) and Kai J. Towe (Essex) were nominated for Ordinary Membership.
ELECTIONS: Richard Shelton (Buckinghamshire) was elected to Ordinary Membership. Zheng Tao Chong (Berkshire) and Nads Sondre Stryger Proitz (Norway) were elected to Student Membership.
Prof. Rory Naismith then read a paper with the amended title The moneyers and Domesday Book.
The President then announced the date of the next meeting and closed the meeting.
Our next meeting takes place at the Society of Antiquaries of London on Monday, 24 April, at 6.15pm BST.
This time the focus is on tokens, specifically those of the 17th century circulating in England, Wales and Ireland, which continue to attract much recent specialist study. Our speaker, Laura Burnett, is currently undertaking an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded PhD at the University of Exeter, examining how people in the mid-17th century used and understood trade tokens. With a background in archaeology and a specialisation in archaeological small finds and numismatics, Laura previously worked for the Portable Antiquities Scheme in Sussex and Somerset. The title of her presentation is The industrious revolution illustrated: 17th century trade tokens – trade, retail and occupational identity.
The SAL is located at Burlington House, on the north side of Piccadilly, opposite the Fortnum & Mason department store. Proceed through the archway leading to the House and the SAL is on the ground floor of the west wing of the building, at the far end of the courtyard, entered through a pair of brown doors.
The nearest Underground stations are Piccadilly Circus and Green Park, both 5 minutes' walk away. Those attending meetings in person will be required to sign the SAL's Visitors' Book.
If you are in London that day we look forward to your company, otherwise please join us on Zoom. To join the meeting online, please use the link as emailed to BNS members. Pre-registration is not necessary. If you are using the desktop version of Zoom, please ensure that you employ the most up-to-date version before joining us. The meeting itself will commence with formal business at 6.15pm and the lecture will begin immediately after that.
As a private coinage, with over 10,000 issuing ‘authorities’, 17th century trade tokens give wonderful insights into the individual and personal. They can also be used to explore larger questions about how the economy of 17th century England and Wales was changing. Detailed examination of individual types will be combined with a broader overview to examine how tokens, and their issuers, were engaged in promoting, and shaping, new goods, new ways of working and new commercial and monetary relationships.
Missed a past lecture? Then catch up with it online!
With the Society's advancement to fully hybrid meetings at the Society of Antiquaries of London, and thanks to the specialist and timely IT support we now receive, most past lectures are now edited and posted on the Society's website within a week of their being given. So if you have missed a specific webinar, why not catch up with it by visiting www.britnumsoc.org, navigate to Meetings, then Lecture Videos. Click the link provided to view the presentation. The video recording should successfully play on any computer that has a suitable video player installed e.g. VLC, which can be freely obtained here: https://www.videolan.
Three of this year's lectures, by John Kraljevich (pictured above), Jennifer Adam and Prof. Rory Naismith, have now joined other presentations from 2021 and 2022 on the Society's website.
Oxford here we come – 15 July 2023!
Plans for the Society's Summer Symposium, now just under three months away, are in the process of being finalised and full details of the event will be announced in the next E-NEWS. The theme of the day-long series of presentations, to be staged as a hybrid meeting at the Headley Lecture Theatre in the Ashmolean Museum, is Coin hoards – discovery and interpretation.
Among the speakers will be Dr Murray Andrews, Dr Barrie Cook, Prof. Chris Howgego, Robert Page and Philip Wise.
The latest in the series of Society Special Publications, Interpreting Early Medieval Coinage: Studies in Memory of Stewart Lyon, was published at the end of last year. Essential reading for those whose particular collecting interests encompass English coinage up to the 12th century, copies of this special festschrift are available to members for the special price of £33.75 (normal retail £45). Why not order your copy today from the Society's distributors – spinkbooks.com
The Society's next Special Publication, currently in the advanced planning stage, will be a joint venture with the Royal Mint Museum and encompass a collection of 34 unpublished papers by Graham Dyer. These cover a range of subjects, ranging from the Vigo 5-guineas of 1703, the 1839-dated 'Una and the lion' 5-pounds of Victoria, up to the 1965 Churchill crown. Likely to be a two-volume heavily-illustrated study, it is hoped that publication may be possible by the end of this year.
Approaching 350: more Blog articles for members to enjoy!
Looking for some early Summer reading? Then there's plenty of new material to catch up with on the Society's Blog, which celebrates its fifth birthday this month and, at the time of writing, featured no less than 344 contributions on all matters numismatic.
Among the latest articles is a re-examination by Hugh Pagan of the surroundings behind the Heworth 1812 'hoard' of 19th century forgeries of early Northumbrian stycas, which quickly enjoyed false legitimacy among Rogers Ruding and other contemporary writers. Lee Stone offers a plausible suggestion for the interpretation of Archbishop Warham's uncertain mark on the coins of Henry VIII, while Gary Oddie makes significant additions to the study of silver coins of James I with his die studies of the shillings from his second and third coinages and exposes a previously unrecognised secret mark which occurs only on Spanish-American 8-réales bearing genuine George III octagonal countermarks.
To further help you track down that particular contribution, our Website Officer, Robert Page, has formulated indices by content and by author.
Check out these and other recent contributions at britnumsoc.org and navigate to Blog.
April 20. Edrei Collection (London). mortonandeden.com
April 21-23. British Art Medal Weekend Conference (Harrow). bams.org.uk
April 24. Society meeting (London)
May 10. Thelen Collection (London). noonans.co.uk
May 15. 'English' Collection, Part IV (Zurich). sincona.com
May 22. Society meeting (London)
May 25. Deane Collection, Part II (London). This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
June 3. London Coin Fair (London). coinfairs.co.uk
June 10. Irish Numismatic Fair (Belfast). This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
June 24. Historical Medal Congress (Warwick). historicalmedalsociety@gmail.
June 28. Comber Collection, Part IV (London). stjauctions.com
July 15. The Society's Summer Symposium: Coin hoards – discovery and interpretation (Oxford)
July 21-22. York Stamp & Coin Fair (York). stampshows.net
August 3 to 6. Orders and Medals Society of America Convention (Orlando). omsa.org
August 8 to 12. American Numismatic Association World's Fair of Money (Pittsburgh). money.org
September 2. London Coin Fair (London). coinfairs.co.uk
September 29-30. COINEX (London). bnta.net
October 3. Richardson Collection (London). noonans.co.uk
October 6 to 8. 41st Annual Token Congress (Northampton). This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
October 10 to 14. FIDEM XXXVII (Florence). fidem-medals.org
November 4. London Coin Fair (London). coinfairs.co.uk