Presidential Dollars John Adams Design - Artist's rendering of the second coin in the new presidents dollar series.
John Adams, who served for one term, from 1797-1801.
I like this drawing of John Adams, although I'm not so sure it conveys his personality traits too well, once one has learned some of the facts about John Adams' life.
However, when we, as a nation, are seeking to celebrate the lives our of patriots and Founding Fathers, we want to see the better side of our heroes when they are depicted on seminal public artwork, and the artist has done a wonderful job of capturing a side of John Adams that most people probably didn't know.
John Adams looks almost kindly here, and keenly intelligent, with a generous mien.
The portrait is flattering, considering that Adams was known to be a somewhat corpulent man. Let's see how the portrait looks when transfered to an actual coin
The image of the coin that appears in the artist rendering is often quite different than what the circulating coin actually looks like!
This is especially true for the John Adams Presidential Dollar.
The artist rendering depicts an intelligent, somewhat attractive man with a thoughtful look in his eyes, but the actual coin seems to have lost much of the sensitivity of the original design. Adams' eyes almost look like they have mascara and eye liner around them!
His face seems to have lost definition and his hair looks downright greasy.
Lest I get carried away with my criticisms,
I must remind the reader that many considerations go into the sculpting and engraving of a coin design.
The design must be technologically fit for the high speed coin presses, and the obverse and reverse designs must have some technological synergy, otherwise the coin dies wear down or break very quickly.
There have been several very lovely coin designs created in the past, such as the Saint-Gaudens Double Eagle, or the Peace Dollar by Anthony de Francisci, which were meant by the artists to be struck in very high relief.
However, the realities of mass coining didn't mesh well with the artists' intentions, and both of these designs had to be altered to made them feasible for high-production coining.
Although it might be interesting to compare the "before and after" photos of the artist renderings to the actual coins, the fact is that without knowing what the precise technical challenges were for the engraving of each design,
it is an exercise in pure speculation to guess why one feature of John Adams' face might have been softened while another was emphasized.
The John Adams Presidential Dollar was designed by Artistic Infusion Program Master Designer Joel Iskowitz, and sculpted by U.S. Mint sculptor-engraver Charles Vickers.
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