Charlotte Metcalf is the Editor of Great British Brands and the co-presenter of Break Out Culture, a weekly podcast with former Minister of Culture, Lord Vaizey. She is also a film-maker, author and journalist. She reports regularly for Thomas Lyte on cultural events, exhibitions, fairs and publications that are of interest to the communities of craftsmen we represent and celebrate, with a particular focus on goldsmiths and silversmiths.
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The purpose-built Barber Institute, housed in one of Birmingham’s finest Art Deco buildings, was opened by Queen Mary in 1939. It remains home to one of the most outstanding small European art collections in the UK, incorporating paintings, drawings, prints, works on paper, sculpture and decorative arts. What is perhaps less well known is that the Barber also owns one of the most impressive collections of Roman, Byzantine, Sasanian, medieval Islamic, and medieval and modern Hungarian coins in the world, with around 16,000 objects.
Birmingham is rightly proud of the Barber’s magnificent art collection, which spans seven centuries and contains work by artists like Botticelli, Bellini, Gainsborough, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Manet, Magritte and Auerbach. Then in 1967 the Trustees supplemented this collection further by acquiring over 15,000 coins from two distinguished collectors and numismatists, Philip Whitting and Geoffrey Haines.
The Barber Institute of Fine Arts – Photo Credit: Patrick Dandy
Philip Witting had been a teacher at the University of Birmingham, which is why he decided to donate his collection to the Barber rather than to a more established collection, like the ones in the British Museum, Fitzwilliam or Ashmolean. He encouraged his friend and colleague Geoffrey Haines to do the same. Since the sixties, the coin collection has been added to with donations and acquisitions of Trapezuntine coins and seals and British and Hungarian coins.
Photo Credit: Patrick Dandy
The Barber’s curators are energetic in continuing to put together fascinating exhibitions, encouraging visitors to look at coins in a new way. The current exhibition, Paying Respects: Money and Mortality focuses on the role coins play in death rituals. Fascinatingly, this is all part of Barber’s commitment to ‘social prescribing’, using their exhibitions to help people manage their mental health. So Paying Respects, curated by Maria Vrij, allows us to see how coins have been created not just for barter and trade but to commemorate people we have loved and lost.
Silver denarius made by Publius Sepullius Macer in the name of Gaius Julius Caesar, 44 BCE in Rome, 2001.1017.02
Two of the coins on display depict Cybele and Mars, (the Anatolian mother goddess and Roman god of war) as surrogate divine parents, helping a dead child pass into the next life. These are similar coins to those used in real fourth-century Roman child burials near Colchester.
Gold solidus of Theophilos depicting Michael II and Constantine, made about 830-40 CE in Constantinople, B4683
Then there’s a fourth century coin commemorating Emperor Maxentius’s son and a ninth century coin in memory of Emperor Theopolis’s son. Indeed, this coin is one of only two pieces of evidence which immortalise Theopolis’s son. Otherwise there merely remains a brief mention of him in written records, describing his little sarcophagus at the Church of the Holy Apostle in Constantinople.
Another three coins depict Shiva, the four-handed god of life and death and lord of the dance of creation and destruction, known as the Tandava. As Shiva dances people die and are reborn. One of the three coins is a second century CE (or Common Era) coin of the Kushan Empire and shows Shiva with a trident, drum, vase and wreath, combined with Oesho, the Bactrian god of wind who shepherds souls between this life and the next.
There are also some wonderful examples of Roman coins, immortalising some of the Empire’s mighty rulers, for example there are eighth century Byzantine coins showing Constantine VI’s father, Leo V, grandfather Leo IV and great-grandfather Leo III.
Silver denarius of Marcus Aurelius in the name of Antoninus Pius, made 161-80 CE in Rome, R1231
What is so engaging about this exhibition is that it that it persuades us to rethink our relationship to coins entirely. At a time when costs are spiralling and money could well be considered as injurious to our mental health and certainly not invested with any spiritual qualities, these ancient tiny round pieces of metal open a door into a world in which coins represent people’s beliefs and hopes. And of course, in the process of wanting to commemorate a beloved child or an ancestor, these coins have been crafted with exquisite care and attention to detail.
The exhibition also reveals just how much craftsmanship has always gone into producing coins. As they jingle around in the bottom of our pockets or purses, tarnished and unloved, this exhibition highlights a role that craftsmanship can play in making even something as mundane, transactional and functional as a coin a force for good in our lives.
Read about our press mentions and awards for the project
We have selected a number of case studies that demonstrate the broad range of our capabilities designing and making in precious metals.
