English Patterns
The first English coin we can surely identify is a groat, originally worth fourpence. This piece, an example of which was illustrated and sold in the Dodsley Cuff sale of the mid-19th century, had crowns in place of the usual three pellets in each quarter of the reverse.
Patterns are particularly identifiable and exist in larger numbers from the reign of Elizabeth I onwards. The experimental base metal issues of all coinage prior to the mid-18th century have been well preserved.
Boulton's mint in Soho produced prodigious quantities of patterns, which were supplemented by Taylor some fifty or so years later from the same dies.
Read more about this topic: Pattern Coin
Famous quotes containing the words english and/or patterns:
“He is no mystic, either, more than Newton or Arkwright or Davy, and tolerates none. Not one obscure line, or half line, did he ever write. His meaning lies plain as the daylight.... It has the distinctness of picture to his mind, and he tells us only what he sees printed in largest English type upon the face of things.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The ninety percent of human experience that does not fit into established narrative patterns falls into oblivion.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)