102751 | GREAT BRITAIN. "Linlithgow Threshold" cast bronze Medal.

102751  |  GREAT BRITAIN. "Linlithgow Threshold" cast bronze Medal. Issued 2001 (80mm x 79mm, 650.80 g, 12h). By S. Beeson for the British Art Medal Society and cast by Niagara Falls.

 

Each side: square-like structure with various insets, cutouts, and crenelations. Edge: SB 2002/23.

 

Attwood 159 & p. 35; The Medal 40, p. 108 (and also serving as the cover art for the issue); De Beeldenaar –. Essentially as Made. Dark brown surfaces. An intriguing and highly sculptural work of medallic art, which freely stands and is one of just 30 made.

 

An architect and educator now based in Edinburgh where he is a subject lead at the Glasgow School of Art Highland Campus, Simon Beeson began attending BAMS and FIDEM events with his partner, Nicola d'Alton Moss, in 1989. About this medal for the British Art Medal Society, he wrote "...in 1999 I moved to the town of Linlithgow, just west of Edinburgh. My new morning walk to the station took me past the end of the loch with a view of Linlithgow Palace, birth-place of Mary Queen of Scots, and now a ruin. During the first few months here, I modelled this small wall from a piece of air-dry clay. The medal reflects an interest in both the inhabited wall of castles in Scotland and Northumberland, and the two sided similarities of walls and medals. As with previous medals it acts as a threshold between two worlds, an outside and an inside, the various windows and stairs indicating an inhabited quality, a human presence. Usually I prefer to cast plaster into constructed moulds, but the modelled clay has a more tactile presence, even including a thumb impression, which somehow adds to the sense of inhabitation rather than simply formal composition. Now we are in a new home with a view of the palace, which I find constantly fascinating."

 

Upload: 1 June 2024.