Hard at Work: The Diary of Leonard Wyon 1853-1867
Author:
Philip Attwood
ISBN:
9781907427329
Binding:
Hardcover
Year:
2014
Pages:
486
Weight:
1 kg 792 grams
Price:
INR
3860.00
Leonard Wyon (1826-1891) was Victorian Britain's foremost designer of coins and medals. The diary that he kept from 1853 to 1867 throws light on many of Wyon's most important works: official commissions, including the famous 'bun' penny of Queen Victoria, coins destined for India, Australia and Canada, campaign medals awarded for service in the various mid nineteenth-century military and naval actions in which Britain was engaged, and the prize medal for the 1862 International Exhibition. Other medals were commissioned by the Queen herself, as well as by a broad range of learned societies, academic institutions, commercial concerns and private individuals. In this way Wyon came into direct personal contact with such notable figures of his time as Prince Albert and Henry Cole, the architect Joseph Paxton and the painter Daniel Maclise.Wyon's diary also chronicles the more personal aspects of his daily life and domestic arrangements, revealing the ways in which he and his extensive family occupied their leisure hours and documenting such activities as his visits to exhibitions and his opinions on the works of art he saw, his shopping excursions in London, his holidays in Britain and abroad, and (most importantly in Wyon's view) the religious services he attended and the philanthropic ventures that, as an Evangelical Christian, he saw it as his duty to support.This book includes a fully annotated transcription of the diary, an introduction discussing all aspects of Leonard Wyon's life, and appendices giving detailed accounts of the production of all the works by Wyon mentioned in the diary.