The culture of die engravers

Thanks for the PDF link. Though a bit dated and on Greek engravers, it does have some value for the query.

 

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So @Valentinian has highly praised Andrew Burnett’s COINAGE IN THE ROMAN WORLD. I borrowed it from my library and liked it so much I ordered my own copy. It is a dense book—meaning lots of good information in comparatively few (168) pages. Charles Davis still has a copy for a mere $15. https://www.vcoins.com/en/stores/ch...oinage_in_the_roman_world/428321/Default.aspx

Here’s Burnett’s discussion of LRB design selection and a brief suggestion about how die engraver models were circulated. The speculative nature of this discuss suggests there is much to learn about the culture of die engravers.

Chapter Eight Designs: The coming of Christianity

“The choice of coin designs in the late empire was assumed by contemporaries to lie with the emperor. This is clear, not just from the description in Eusebius of how Constantine made coins of himself in an attitude of prayer (see chapter four), but also in a rather quaint pamphlet entitled de rebus bellicis (On Military Affairs), which was addressed to the emperors in the late fourth century. At the beginning of this work, the author makes various suggestions about the coinage, and recommends new designs for the gold and bronze coinage. … [T]he very fact that the author made his suggestions in this way indicates that he assumed that the designs were chosen by the emperor himself. As in the early empire, however, the actual mechanism of choice may have been more complex, although we do not know the importance of the role of the comes sacrarum largitionum “Count of Imperial Largesses", the official in charge of the one of the three main financial departments of the late empire which dealt with mints, mines, state clothing factories and the distribution of precious metal coinage to the army. Nor can we really assess the role of the man in charge of each individual mint, the procurator Monetae, although the general similarity of the designs used at different mints obviously implies that he cannot have had more than a fairly minor interpretative role. An examination of the details of the designs used at different mints in the 330s, for example, has made it possible to form a rough idea of how detailed a model or pattern was sent out. The differences and similarities of detail suggest that rough (perhaps only written?) instructions were sent out, specifying only the general layout of the design and the inscriptions to be used, but not such details as how the figures on the reverse should be clothed, or the sort of wreath to be used for the emperor.” (140)

 

Thanks @Gavin Richardson for the link and the excerpt. I just bought that copy.