The Great Exhibition

Photographs

Details

Occasion

Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations, Hyde Park, 1851. Official Prize Medal.

Designer

Obverse: William Wyon R.A. Reverse: Leonard C. Wyon Des. & Sc., Royal Mint, London. Legend: Dissociata locis concordi pace ligavit.

Metal & type

Bronze Prize Medal, 77 mm. The Science Museum holds an example with the edge engraved A. Siebe — Prize Medal of the Exhibition (Class VII / XXII).

Historic connection

Awarded to Augustus Siebe himself for diving apparatus and mechanical inventions. The first of the house medals, and the one that put the closed helmet before a world public.

A companion official type — the Jurors’ Medal — uses the same conjoined portraits with a different reverse ( Pulcher et ille labor palma decorare laborem , Fame crowning Industry). Both dies are by the Wyons.

Sources

Medal-related sources from the shared bibliography. They document exhibitions and attributions in general; no single source proves the provenance of the pictured example.

• Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition, 1851 — Augustus Siebe, Class V and Class VII entries.

  Contemporary exhibitor listing for Siebe’s diving apparatus. It establishes exhibits, but does not by itself prove the ownership or provenance of any medal pictured here.

• Science Museum Group Collection. “Augustus Siebe” (person record cp48664).

  Institutional biography covering the workshop, Deane collaboration, 1851 exhibition, family succession and Siebe’s death in 1872.

• Burchett, Michael, and Robert Burchett. “An Updated Short History of the British Diving Apparatus Manufacturers, Part 1: The Siebe Gorman Company.” The International Journal of Diving History.

  Historical Diving Society study used for the manufacturer’s personnel and company chronology; it is not treated as proof for every medal attribution.

• Blaxland, Gregory. “Wine from New South Wales.” Transactions of the Society Instituted at London, vol. 46, 1827.

  Digitised primary publication of Blaxland’s account of New South Wales wine in the Society’s Transactions. It documents the award history behind his 1823 silver medal; this is not Augustus Siebe’s separate Vulcan Medal of the same year.

• Royal Museums Greenwich, Denny Collection. Exhibition prize-medal records MED2789, MED2787, MED2795 and MED2797.

  Museum records for London 1862, Vienna 1873, Sydney 1879 and Edinburgh 1890, supporting dates, materials, inscriptions and medallist attributions.

• Victoria and Albert Museum. “Prize medal, 1862 London International Exhibition,” Leonard Charles Wyon (O311815).

  Catalogue record for the 1862 London prize-medal design, iconography and inscription.

• Germanisches Nationalmuseum. “Wien, Weltausstellung, Preismedaille ‘Dem Verdienste’ 1873” (Med13897).

  Museum record for the Vienna medal by Josef Tautenhayn and Karl Schwenzer; it also cites Augustin’s specialist catalogue.

• Smithsonian National Museum of American History. “Centennial International Exhibition of 1876 Award Medal.”

  Institutional record for Henry Mitchell’s Philadelphia Centennial award medal, including its legend and issue context.

• Powerhouse Collection. “International Fisheries Exhibition medal and case, 1883” (N18088).

  Confirms Leonard Charles Wyon’s obverse, Lewis Foreman Day’s reverse and manufacture by John Pinches.

• The Metropolitan Museum of Art. “To Commemorate the Paris International Exposition of 1878,” Jules-Clément Chaplain.

  Museum catalogue record supporting the Chaplain attribution for the Paris 1878 medal type.

• Augustin, Ines. Die Medaillen und Plaketten der großen Weltausstellungen 1851–1904. Vienna, 1985.

  Specialist reference covering the world’s-fair medal series across the central period of this archive; linked through the Germanisches Nationalmuseum catalogue citation.

• Forrer, Leonard. Biographical Dictionary of Medallists, Coin-, Gem-, and Seal-Engravers. 8 vols. London, 1904–1930.

  Standard biographical reference for medallists, used here especially for Lewis F. Day and exhibition-medal designer credits.