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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Gavin Richardson, post: 3182097, member: 83956&quot;]I would like to read an article, book, or book section on the culture of Roman die engravers. What I mean by that is how engraving was formalized as a trade, and to what extent it was related to other artistic trades such as gem carving and manuscript design. I suspect there was a strong relationship between numismatic die engraving and gem carving. But I see so much correspondence between late antique manuscript art and the images on late Roman bronze coinage that I am intrigued by the possibility that these artists had some kind of shared occupational background. How were artistic patterns disseminated to die engravers throughout the empire? What training did an engraver have? Were die engravers slaves like other mint workers, or did they have higher social status?</p><p><br /></p><p>Perhaps we do not know enough to speculate on these matters, but I would be grateful to know what we can know about them. Can someone point me toward a cointalk thread or print resource that might answer some of these questions?</p><p><br /></p><p>Just so I am not all take and no give, here is a passage from a 1951 article that suggests that Alexandrian die engravers worked from “pattern books,” but since the discussion is from the 1950s, I do not know if current scholarship has confirmed or rejected such a suggestion.</p><p><br /></p><p>“Professors Sir John Beazley and Bernard Ashmole have both advised me that there must have been &#039;pattern books&#039; or some form of models of mythological designs available in antiquity, though there is no evidence of their exact nature. These would pass freely amongst artists and craftsmen, who could select the particular design most suitable for their purpose, and possibly introduce variations to adapt it to their field. It is probable that new artists were employed at Alexandria to design the dies for this &#039;pictorial&#039; series, since the handling in the work of the two whose technique can be compared, as shown in the first article, is quite unlike anything that had appeared previously at that mint. The new artists may have come from Asia Minor, but the only ground for suggesting this is the preference manifested for subjects with an Asiatic context: the patterns were the common property of the Greek world. ... It may be noted that the new men seem to have been engaged only on the reverse dies: the obverses were of the style normal at Alexandria, and the same obverse dies were used in some cases for the pictorial reverses and for the commoner ones.” (102)</p><p><br /></p><p>Pictorial Coin-Types at the Roman Mint of Alexandria: A Second Supplement; Author(s): J. G. Milne; Source: <i>The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology</i> Vol. 37 (Dec., 1951), pp. 100-102</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]820145[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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