Mercury Dime - Design

Design

Weinman never disclosed the name of the model for the obverse, and no person ever claimed to have been her. The winged Liberty is widely believed, however, to have been based on a 1913 bust Weinman sculpted of Elsie Stevens, wife of Wallace Stevens. A lawyer and insurance executive, Wallace Stevens later became famous as a poet; Wallace and Elsie Stevens rented an apartment from Weinman from 1909 to 1916. In a draft of his unpublished autobiography, Woolley states that Weinman refused to name the model, but told him it was the wife of a lawyer who lived above his Manhattan apartment. (Woolley, in a later version, omits the location, saying only that Weinman said it was the wife of a lawyer friend). Woolley recorded that Weinman told him that the model wore the top of an old pair of stockings to simulate the cap. In 1966, Holly Stevens, Wallace and Elsie's daughter, noted in her edition of her father's letters that Elsie had been the model for Weinman's dime and half dollar. Liberty's features also bear a resemblance to the face of Victory in Weinman's 1909 statuary group erected in Baltimore, the Union Soldiers and Sailors' Monument.

Weinman's dime depicts Liberty with a wreath of tight curls, and wearing a traditional pileus, or Liberty cap. His depiction of the pileus as a winged cap has provoked comparisons with Roman Republic denarii, which art historian Cornelius Vermeule considered superficial. Weinman wrote that he considered the winged cap to symbolize "liberty of thought". Vermeule suggests that one reason for the use of wings was that Weinman, in common with many in the tradition of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, whom Weinman had studied under, liked the effect of feathers done in relief. The reverse depicts a fasces, the object carried by lictors, who accompanied Roman magistrates, representing war and justice. It is contrasted with a large olive branch symbolizing peace. According to Breen, "Weinman's symbolic message in this design ... was clearly an updated 'Don't tread on me'". The fasces is bound both horizontally and diagonally by a leather strap, with the loose ends at the bottom. The lettering is in Roman style, and is made as discreet as possible. Weinman's monogram, AW, appears on the obverse, midway between the date and the letter Y in "". The mintmark is located on the reverse, to the right of the first E in "".

Woolley described the design in his 1916 report to the Secretary of the Treasury:

The design of the dime, owing to the smallness of the coin, has been held quite simple. The obverse shows a head of Liberty with winged cap. The head is simple and firm in form, the profile forceful. The reverse shows a design of the bundle of rods, with battle-ax, known as "Fasces", and symbolical of unity, wherein lies the nation's strength. Surrounding the fasces is a full-foliaged branch of olive, symbolical of peace.