WORLD ART MEDALS France, Colonel Laussedat, c.1896, a very large uniface cast bronze portrait maquette, unsigned [by L.-O. Roty], bust right, 259mm (Roty Compagnonnage p.92; BDM IV, 244 and VIII, 176; cf. Coll. R. Marx 66; cf. Gaz. Num. 1897, p.364). Extremely fine and lightly patinated, very rare; with bolts for attachment on the back (£90-120)

Aimé Laussedat (1819-1907), astronomer, Director of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers and the architect behind the French military adopting dirigible balloons as a tool of war in 1874. In the 1840s he helped to pioneer photogrammetry, the technique for estimating the shape of terrain from ground and aerial photographs