A Collection of 1851 Great Exhibition Medals

A COLLECTION OF 1851 GREAT EXHIBITION MEDALS, Council Medal, 1851, by W. Wyon and J.F. Domard, in bronze, conjoined busts of Victoria and Prince Albert left, trident and dolphins in field, reverse Britannia crowning standing figures of Commerce and Industry, flags and artefacts behind, edge named (J.G. Appold, Class V), 89mm (BHM 2461; E 1455); together with International Exhibition, 1862, bronze award medal by L.C. Wyon, Britannia surrounded by symbolic figures, reverse legend in wreath, edge named (J.G. Appold FRS, Juror, Class XXXI), 77mm (BHM 2747; E 1553) [2]. Former with minor rim bruising, otherwise both extremely fine and practically as struck, the first rare; both in red fitted cases of issue (£140-180)

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, A Collection of 1851 Great Exhibition Medals.

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Ex Stainton (91, part and 94, part); 1st medal only illustrated.

John George Appold (1800-65), an ingenious mechanician and inventor, lived at 23 Wilson Street, Finsbury. He inherited his father’s fur skin dying business in 1822, amassing a considerable fortune so that by the mid-1840s he was able to devote himself to mechanical pursuits. His most important invention, a centrifugal rotary pump for draining marshland, manufactured by Easton & Amos Grove, Southwark, won him the Council Medal at the 1851 Great Exhibition; it was highly commended in the juries’ report. Appold’s house “was a museum of mechanical contrivances, such as doors which opened at a person’s approach and shutters that closed at the touch of a spring” (DNB). Further biographical detail is sold with the lot