A Style of Their Own

A few notes on Scottish coin design from David to Mary

 

Scottish coinage began during the Anarchy and Stephen’s reign (1135-1154). After the death of Henry I in 1135, Stephen of Blois, despite an oath to Matilda, Henry I’s daughter, seized the English throne. The next year, David I moved south to support Matilda, his niece. Capturing the mint at Carlisle resulted in the first coinage that is considered “Scottish.”  Malcolm, David’s twelve-year-old grandson came to the throne in 1153 but coinage continued in the somewhat irregular pattern that had marked David’s reign, not unlike the irregular coinage of the Anarchy in England. 

Around 1170, about five years into his reign and not long after the introduction of the short cross penny in England, William I began the “crescent and pellet” coinage that prevailed until a voided short cross series began in 1195. It was not until the reign of Alexander III (1249-1286) that this high-quality Scottish coinage was produced in large enough quantities that substantial quantities of coinage of the era survived and the neatly produced pennies of Alexander III matched the high quality of English coinage in use at the time. 

David II’s coinage was influenced by English coinage under Edward III. Though his effort at a gold noble proved short-lived (only four examples are known), his introduction of the groat, a four-penny piece, paralleled the English series and was a dominant part of Scottish coinage until the reign of James V. Similar in terms of overall design to the English groat until the reign of James III, the Scottish groat took an unusual artistic turn in 1471 with a realistic Renaissance image of the young king replacing the stylized facing medieval bust that was the standard at the time. This was an era of humanistic revival in the arts in Italy and realistic portraiture was one of the most visible signs of this changed world view. This reawakening made its way to Scotland and influenced coinage there well before this new spirit influenced coin artistry in the rest of Britain.

A more regular gold coinage in Scotland came during the reign of Robert III (1390-1406) with the gold lion that reflected the gold ecu d’or of French king Charles VI. (Note lot 21 in this sale.) From there, the gold issues of Scotland continue to show style and imagination—riders, unicorns, bonnet pieces, hat pieces and, ultimately the beautiful coins of Mary and the varied gold issues of James VI. 

The Italian and, later, French influences on Scottish coinage peaked during the reign of Mary. John Achesoun was the master of the mint and the 1562-1563 testoon of Mary was produced under his leadership with dies from the French artist Antoine Brucher at the Paris mint. The earlier portrait testoon of Mary as she was nearing eleven years old had been his work as well.

 

Allan Davisson

 

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

 

How Bidding Works

 

Davissons Ltd uses a soft close for its auctions, which means no lot closes until everyone is done bidding. Every time a bid is placed within the final 40 seconds of a lot closing, the timer is reset to 40 seconds. This continues until no bids are placed for 40 seconds, at which point the lot closes. There will never be more than one lot closing at once, as the next lot is not allowed to begin closing until the current lot closes.

To bid: enter your maximum bid into the text box, and click submit. Only round dollar amounts are accepted. You are then required to confirm your bid. Once confirmed, all bids are final. If you have placed a bid in error you must call during office hours and speak to one of us. If you are the current high bidder then it will display “Current High Bidder: YOU” If you are not the high bidder, or if you are not logged in, then the current high bidder will be identified by their 5 digit client ID. You may find your client ID under the Account tab.

Bids are reduced automatically, so feel free to bid your maximum and it will be reduced to one increment over the current high bid. If a user places a bid that is higher than necessary to be the current high bidder on the lot, the displayed bid will reflect one advance over the next lower bid. For example, if a user "A" places a bid of $120 on a lot which opens at $100, "A" will be winning that lot at $100. If another user "B" bids $110, the winning bidder will be "A" at $120, one advance over the supporting bid of $110. If user "B" in this example instead placed a bid at $120, then user "A" will still be winning at $120 because they placed that maximum bid value first.

Increments can be viewed here. The next bid will always be on the next increment, so if a user is winning a lot at $100, or $105, or $109, the next bid will still always be $110.

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