Historical and Art Medals

France, 1900. France. Exposition Universelle Internationale, Paris, a silver Art Nouveau prize medal by J. C. Chaplain, bust of "La France" right, city view in front, reverse figures over Expo pavilion, the tablet below inscribed "Club des Photographes Amateurs A Prague", 64mm (PBE 81). Extremely fine; in contemporary maroon gilt-blocked case

Jules-Clement Chaplain (1839-1909), together with Oscar Roty (1846-1911), were the two medallists who conceived the Art Nouveau style of medallic art in France. Chaplain himself was the first important French artist to make use of the flexibility offered by the reducing machine, which was in wide use by the 1 860s. Chaplain demonstrated that, with this new technology, it was possible for a medallist to be successful both in making cast and struck medals, and that a single properly-conceived model would suffice as the master for large cast medals and small struck plaquettes