"The Medal Mint has a collection of punches and matrices composed of from 10,000 to 11,000 dies; it includes the reigns of our kings from Charles VIII up to Louis Philippe. Although the early reigns may be far from complete, never the less these punches and dies are of a very great importance, thus their preservation and maintenance are imperative. Up to July 1830 an employee having the title of keeper had the duty of taking care of them and putting them in order; a budget of 6000 francs was provided for their upkeep. The dies of the early reigns, even those of Louis XIV are poorly made from a mechanical standpoint, thus they are very subject to breaking or damage every day in making medals. Their renewal requires the most scrupulous supervision so the types don't lose any of their perfection or imperfection. It is essential to preserve their character even in the slightest details; this supervision must be continuous, because by continuing to strike with a die that is beginning to destroy itself one runs the risk of changing the nature of the engraving and even of losing the whole thing.

The sale of the bronze medals has been reduced almost to nothing by the exorbitant raising of the prices; if the charges were reduced by two-thirds (which would still leave a respectable profit over manufacturing costs) the sale of these medals would be greatly increased. Naturally the cost of maintaining the dies would also go up, but this cost would not go up nearly as much because of the use, that depending rather on the care taken of the die, on how often it was replaced, and particularly in the supervision exercised over the coiners.

Engraving of medals, or rather, medal sculpture, is a high and demanding art which cannot be encouraged except by the government; private individuals are hardly accustomed to strike medals and besides, architecture, sculpture and painting have special funds allocated to them in the various budgets; why isn't it the same for medal sculpture; it is the only one which multiplies its work like printing, resists the ravages of time, and consequently transmits to posterity historical facts, monuments, and the state of the arts in every period. To neglect this art to the point of making it necessary for those who practice it to abandon it for lack of employment is so shortsighted and ungrateful as to be incomprehensible, particularly when it is known that thirty or forty thousand francs would be enough to support it.

By publishing collections of easily-made medals, that is to say, of moderate relief and diameter, and by lowering the price by two thirds, one would certainly obtain the active support of the public in the prosperity of medal sculpture.

I ask for your serious attention to these thoughts, Count; they cannot fail to be taken into consideration by an enlightened lover of the arts who is full of solicitude for their prosperity.

I am with respect, Mr. President, your very humble and obedient servant, Barre."

The count underlined many phrases and bracketed entire paragraphs, proof of the interest he took in reading the letter and of real agreement between the thoughts of the artist and the intentions of the president of the commission.

First the president had an inventory made of the most defective dies; these were reported to be one hundred fourteen. Then he asked his predecessor whether some dies were not in the hands of any engravers to be copied. De Sussy wrote in his nervous writing on the margin of the negative response, "Mr. Petit has sent back one, that for 'The distribution of the standards'. It is quite clear we are talking of private engravers; at this period the mint did not have a studio for engraving. Finally, he established the committee on technical competence on which he based his medallic policy and which his successors also involved in decisions concerning the manufacture of coins and punches. The Committee saw the light of day. We find its birth certificate in the minutes of the Mint Commission held on 17 May 1832:

"Formation of a jury for the restoration of the medal dies belonging to the state. The President explained to the commission that it is part of his responsibility to organize in the best possible way and to improve as much as possible the more than fifteen thousand dies which came from the Medal Mint. A preliminary examination showed that a very great number of the dies had deteriorated, that it was even impossible to complete the collections reserved for His Majesty and to satisfy the requests of amateurs because many of the dies required for the striking of those collections, which went back to Charles VIII, no longer existed; finally, that most of the existing dies were not accompanied by the punches necessary for their reproduction when they became altered or accidentally destroyed, or wore out. In such a situation the committee had to call on experts to assure itself that the repairs and reproductions it had to have made would be executed with the proper care and perfection and to establish its opinion on the money which would have to be allocated for that work. This objective would be attained perfectly by the formation of a committee of artists, taken from the Institute and outside it, which would be requested to give its advice to the commission whenever the good of the service required it. This committee could also be consulted on improvements and economies to be effected in manufacturing in the mints and on the simplification of the machines presently in use."

The Commission deliberated on this presentation and decreed
Article 1. A committee composed of five members will be attached to the Commission of Coins and Medals and will be called up by it every time the needs of the service require it to give its advice on the work which may be required by the present state of the dies the Commission acquired from the former Medal Mint or those it may acquire later. This committee will also be called upon to give its advice 1) on the payment which should be allowed for that sort of work, 2) on the choice of artists to whom this work may be entrusted, 3) on accepting the work which shall have been ordered. Note: A certain number of medals will be struck in the presence of the committee to assure it of the soundness of the dies, 4) finally, on the improvements which may be made in the manufacture of medals as well as of coins. Only in the latter case may the head engraver of the mint and the engineer attached to the Paris Mint be part of the committee, with a voice in the proceedings.
Article 2. The committee will meet when called together by the president of the Commission of Coins and Medals and will be presided over by him or by one of the general commissioners. At every meeting the suggestions proposed by the committee on the subjects submitted to it by the Commission will be recorded in a register which will be kept by a member the president will designate, and this register will be deposited in the secretariat of the Commission.
Article 3. A jeton of the value of five or six francs will be distributed to each of the members of the committee present; the president and the general commissioners will not participate in that distribution.
Article 4. The five members of the committee will be named by the Secretary of Finances from a list of twelve candidates which will be presented to him by the Commission of Coins and Medals.
Article 5. This list will be formed by the medal engravers living in Paris, convoked for this purpose by the president of the Commission. No one can be placed on the list except members of the Institute which is part of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and the medal sculptors or engravers who shall have made a model, executed a medal, or displayed in the Royal Museum of the Louvre.The engravers who have taken part in the different contests which have been held for the engraving of coin dies make up, by right, part of those eligible for the list of twelve candidates. The nomination of these twelve candidates will be by secret ballot, requiring a majority of two thirds of the votes of the members present.
Article 6. The committee will be reelected every two years; the members who shall have served may be reelected. In case of vacancies caused by death happening within the two years, the minister will take a replacement from among the candidates already designated who are not already on the committee.
Article 7. The present deliberation will be submitted to the approbation of the Minister of Finances.
Signed: The President, Comte de Sussy; Commissioners Moulard, Brunet,

Approved 24 May 1832: The Minister of Finance, Louis."

On the following June 16 the administration sent a circular to engravers, inviting them to assemble on Saturday, 23 June, to carry out the first elections, Chosen were Galle, of the Institute, medal engraver; David d'Angers, of the Institute, sculptor; Ingres, painter; Barre and E. Gatteaux, medal engravers. On 5 July the administration requested the "Moniteur" to insert this note:
" The Minister of Finances has established a consulting committee for the Commission of Coins and Medals. More than 12,000 dies have been turned over to this commission by the old Medal Mint. Most of these dies, deteriorated by long use, are out of service; it is necessary either to have them copied or to give up striking these beautiful medals which consecrate the most memorable deeds in our history, witnessing the progress of numismatics and honoring the burins of French artists.
The difficulties of such a task must be appreciated. It is necessary for a perfect identity to signalize the reproduced die, and if the author of the original die is no longer alive it is necessary to entrust the reproduction to the one of our engravers whose talent has the most similarity to the burin which engraved the first type.
The Commission of Coins and Medals cannot obtain these results without resorting to the leading masters of the art, and for this reason the Minister of Finances has composed the consulting committee of a sculptor, a painter, and three engravers, who are Messers Galle, David, and Ingres, members of the Institute, and Barre and Gatteaux, medal engravers. With the help of this committee, which will be reelected every two years, the commission hopes gradually to remake the dies in its custody and which date back to Charles VIII, to furnish our engravers with a means of exercising their talent, and thus to add to the encouragement which the Minister of Public Works, entrusted with fine arts, can give to medal engraving by the orders he alone can incite or ordain."

The Minister of Finances allowed the committee a budget of 20,000 francs intended to finance the work of remaking and the creation of new medals. Payment of its members fell to the Commission of Coins by the classical procedure of a jeton for presence. We know the medal chosen from a note addressed on 29 June to Collet, Director of Manufacturing:
"Please give the necessary orders to have fifty silver jetons with a value of six francs struck from the dies representing on one side History and Numismatics and bearing on the other side this inscription: To the Committee of Engravers."

The committee got to work. The bimonthly meetings were less frequent beginning in 1845, when the program of recreating the historic dies proved to be sufficiently advanced. The work which would be accomplished in less than sixty years appears considerable. It came within three categories: medals, hallmarks, coins. [This translation contains only the section on medals.]

Preservation of the historic punches and dies and remaking the hubs. The initial reason for creating the committee, this mission occupied it almost exclusively during the first years of its functioning. A simple but efficacious procedure was inaugurated in the first meetings.

Examination of the punches.
The committee worked with groups of fifty or sixty dies or hubs taken successively from the collection. It verified the condition of each one and decided the work to be done from the state of conservation and the historical or commercial interest it presented. From reading the minutes it appears that the technicians were much less concerned than today about the integrity of the steel; a small crack or slight pitting did not worry them. Was that because the less powerful presses of that time did not threaten to shatter the compromised dies? Perhaps, but the fundamental reason is elsewhere. The committee was struck by an evident fact: it had arrived just in time to save the collection from irreparable destruction. Pressed to ward it off, the first thing to do was to make impressions of all the historic dies. Generations of engravers had kept their punches as their own property, and these precious means of security were for the most part dispersed through auction sales and family shipwrecks. The new administration was the victim of old customs; it no longer had the means to replace the dies faithfully. Every broken die was an unrepairable loss.
Distribution of the work.
The salvage that began in June 1832 lasted almost fifty years and provided work accomplished by the picked engravers satisfying the terms of the second paragraph of Article 5 of the text decreed by the Coin Commission in their 17 May meeting.
Upon the creation of the committee, that select phalanx chose the following names: Domard, Petit, David, Caunois, Jacques Edouard Gatteaux, Pingret, Dumont, Fouginet, Leclerc, Valentin Borrel, Eugene Dubois, Michaut, Vatinelle. Brenet, who was approaching sixty, was joined to them on his request in 1837 and was commissioned to remake the punches and to make new dies for the works he had given the imperial gallery. This elite soon transformed itself into a closed club where it was difficult to force an entrance. The engraver Kinstein, a pupil of Nicolas Tiolier and of David, furnishes one example among several. On 13 April 1834 he sent a letter of application to de Sussy and asked to share in the work. His employer, the mint engraver, wrote on the margin of the young artist's letter recommending him warmly to the attention of the count. It was a wasted effort; the reply was courteous but left the applicant nothing to hope for: "It would be difficult for the Commission to include you in dividing up the work which will be given out in 1834, seeing that it is devoted uniquely to the dies and punches forming part of the Napoleon collection, and to conform to established custom it is necessary to entrust the reproductions to no one except the authors of the original works, but trust that your request will not be lost sight of and that it will be considered if an occasion presents itself." Nothing more is heard of young Kinstein.
The case of the engraver Labouche is not flavorless. In July 1881 he wrote to the president in these words: "Many times during the last twenty years I have had occasion to work indirectly for the Administration of Coins and Medals, accomplishing at second hand the works of reproduction entrusted to other engravers." and, further along, "I take the liberty of telling you that you can verify this with Mr. Lagrange, the Chief Engraver of Coins; Merley; and Cognard, whom I have known for a long time." In short, the ghost did not want to remain so but wanted to be admitted officially. Ruau, the director then, accepted the applications of the petitioners, but that was as far as it went.
Inside the committee itself a study of the minutes of the meetings reveals the existence of many factions. Thus it was that certain artists were favored or ignored according to the composition of this jury. This actual discrimination raised complaints; in 1845 Pingret complained of not getting any more work. The president read his letter at the beginning of the 11 May meeting. The secretary recorded the decision of these gentlemen: "The members of the committee declare that they act paternally as often as possible, taking account of all the circumstances, but that for important works they consider the talent of the artist above everything else." The inventor of the goujon did not deserve such humiliation, particularly if it was administered paternally.

Critical examination.
It is rare that the recutting of a punch or the remaking of a die was looked at favorably by the censors when it was first presented. Every new piece was examined with a loupe; here the letters don't agree exactly, there the field wasn't smoothed sufficiently.
Starting at its meeting on 11 August 1832, the committee clearly declared the basis of its policy and warned the artists of its stubbornness about everything related to absolute fidelity to the originals: "The examination which the committee has had occasion to make leads to these remarks:... [sic]
2) Many engravers entrusted with reproducing dies or worn punches deviate from their subject by making changes or additions which are often not in harmony with the work of the author of the engraving. It is indispensable to see to it that the original engravings are faithfully reproduced.
3) In the reproduction of old dies care has not been taken to use letters like those of the original; letters of modern form have been used, which is a true anachronism. It is to be desired that alphabets be made up, or series of old letters and numbers, reproduced from the letters and numbers of old legends. The committee will examine the work as it is being executed.
4) When the engraver has been careful to reproduce dies to render the subject and the legends of the original faithfully, he has often thought to change the form of the new dies to make them suitable for striking in collars, although they should have been struck from free dies, as originally at the time of engraving the first dies. Medals should be struck from free dies when the original dies were intended for that sort of striking."
In fact we find numerous evidences of this slipshod treatment on which de Sussy declared war, in the cabinets of the die and hub museum. We cite, for example, the dies by Tiolier, Chief Engraver of the Mint, for Lavy's Reestablishment of the Cisalpine Republic; they illustrate perfectly the looseness denounced above. Here are to be found all the elements of the original composition but worked in without any attention to their exact disposition. [ Belaubre did not realize that there are two sets of Italian dies for Lavy's medal and that the French copy is very close to one of them!]
The examination of the work turned in by the engravers took up the greatest part of the meetings. The criticized engravings were trusted to one of the members who became the interpreter of the committee to the artist in question, The secretary entered in the minutes the various points objected to, and in spite of the always very moderate tone of the critics sometimes lets the agitation of the jurors show when their previous instructions have been followed poorly, if the historic engraving has been abused, or when the engraver, himself satisfied, has taken the liberty of hardening his steel before receiving the authorization. The clumsy and the disobedient are severely reprimanded and invited to resubmit the work, of course after it has been untempered. Even Brenet, hired to restore the tools for his own imperial medals, found himself called to order when he allowed himself (he, the creator) to take any liberty, not with the original design but only with his initial interpretation.

Payments.
Some of them protested and demanded supplemental pay. This sort of claim was satisfied only in very rare cases, when the committee agreed that it had let itself be deceived by the apparent easiness of a task later made more delicate by the unsuspected fragility of the original steel. It then awarded a supplement (Dantzell, 1840) or enrolled the engraver for some easy supplemental job (Dantzell, 1843). The average payment for raising a hub again was one hundred fifty francs, while redoing a die was worth up to five hundred.
The committee managed its budget of 20,000 fr. parsimoniously. Although this budget became insufficient very rapidly, it was reduced every year. In 1847 a balance was struck on August 6 which revealed the exhaustion of the funds (19,771.53 fr. spent); on the thirteenth of July, 1885, balancing the accounts showed a deficit of 5,700 fr. In 1847 the president of the Commission had already been refused an increase by the Minister; three years later, 25 June 1851, the members of the committee (Barre, Gayrard, David d'Angers, Picot, and Marley) repeated that request with the support of the administration; it was labor lost.

Creation of new medals.
It is understandable that the committee, which was also engaged in buying all the interesting historical dies and hubs offered them by the engravers who owned them, or by collectors, could not finance, as it would have liked to, the creation of new subjects to complete the collection. It limited its efforts to prize medals and had many decorative wreathes made to be used as reverses to the royal head or the profile of the republic. This modest objective was a sure commercial income-producer at that time.
The abundant medallic gallery of the nineteenth century was produced away from the Quai Conti, in ministerial offices, and the numerous dies which today fill our museum's cabinets were conceived and engraved without ever consulting our committee. An extract from the meeting on 22 February sums up the situation: If, on the contrary, Mr. Domard thinks that the hub and the two dies executed by him were ordered by the Chamber of Peers, the committee has no more to do with it and Mr. Domard should, in that case, address himself to those who do.
Never the less, on 13 June 1840 the committee determined "that there are no more urgent reproductions to be made"; it "thinks that part of the available funds might be spent on making new dies and punches here-in-after to be designated", a head of Hippocrates (50 mm) and a figure with attributes related to agricultural societies (50 mm). Eugene Dubois received two thousand francs for the first; Oudine twenty five hundred for the second. After having submitted their designs for criticism each artist engraved a punch and two dies for his subject. They still weren't through with prize medals.

The Gallery of Famous Men..
It was not until the 28 May 1642 meeting that the committee "in the double aim of encouraging the art of engraving and of consecrating the memory of famous men" began what it is today convenient to call The Gallery of Famous Men. It designated the first three subjects: Parmentier, Jacquart, and Henri Etienne, then enunciated the principles to govern the composition and make up of the whole:
"Conformable to the views expressed by the majority, it is proposed that 1) the proposals relative to these new medals be submitted for the approval of the committee; 2) the Academy be consulted for the legends, if any be required; 3) the artists be required to furnish a single die, with the identical punch; 4) the said medals be fifty millimeters in size; 5) the heads be represented with bare necks; 6) the sum of sixteen hundred francs be allowed by the Commission for the die and punch of each head."
A discussion then arose on a subject which is surprising today, on the question of whether the obverse and reverse of each medal should be done by the same person or whether it was more advisable to give these two jobs to different engravers. Some members thought that the interest of art should be considered before anything and that consequently it was right to let a single artist completely form a new creation. Others, although they completely approved the ideas of their colleagues, none the less maintained that "the individual interests of the engravers should be considered; they cannot often obtain any encouragement from the Commission, and because of the small size of the sum permitted to be disposed of, it is more proper to entrust the execution of each of these new medals to two artists."
After a long discussion the latter view won the majority of the votes. We are quite far from the art of Pisanello, particularly when it is considered that the reverse was nothing but a biographical text.
In 1844 the committee ordered the engraving of Cuvier, Monge, d'Arcet; in 1846 Pascal, Casimir Delavigne, Saint Vincent de Paul, Buffon, Bertholet, l'Abbe de l'Epee, Lavoisier, Descartes, Condorcet. Faithful to this policy, the Commission continued this series up to the end of the century.

Relations with the Academy of Inscriptions.
In this connection it is interesting to go rather deeply into the nature and the frequency of the communications between the committee and the Academy of Inscriptions. On 19 March 1838 Persil, President of the Commission, wrote to the learned body, "The Commission of Coins and Medals, desiring to complete the collection of medals relating to the first revolution and to the reign of Napoleon, I have the honor of requesting that you see fit to communicate to me a collection of drawings and inscriptions with subjects pertaining to these two periods. We shall be happy to have the projects formed by the academy over which you preside executed."
De Sussy, now Keeper of the Museum, accepted the document and in a meeting on 21 April 1838 the committee ordered Gatteaux "to look into it and draw up a report on what use could be made of it in the interest of art." On the following 26th of May the famous engraver read his report and it was decided to return the document to its owner. The minutes don't give any details of the debate and the report by Gatteaux has been lost. Doubtlessly we shall never know whether the committee disapproved of the drawings and legends or whether the lack of funds justified terminating the affair.

In 1851 the committee had recourse to the academy again. Now it was a question of providing texts for the reverses of the Gallery of Famous Men: Gay-Lussac, Denis Papin, Moliere, and Montfaucon. On 23 February 1852 the permanent secretary sent the four texts and proposed a graphic arrangement which would be scrupulously respected by the engravers, Bovy, Borrel, Domard, and Depaulis. In the following May the academy was again called upon, for the medals of Barnard Palissy, Jean Goujon, and the Marshals Soult and Bugeaud. The reply is lost. The same is true for that for the reverses of Voltaire (request of 7 June 1833).

The last correspondence of which we find a trace is that of 9 December 1853. This time the committee requests that the academy compose French legends and exergues (the adjective is underlined) for the medals for the Universal Exposition of 1855 and the construction of the central markets. The Commission of Inscriptions and Medals, entrusted by the full assembly with these lapidary inscriptions, was not content with the designs sent by the administration and asked for the drawings by Bovy and Dantzell. On 21 January Pelouze received a reply which attracts our special attention. In effect our learned neighbors were not content to furnish the legends and exergues requested, but produced some vigorous criticisms of Dantzell's composition, The Central Markets. In doing this they timidly renewed the tradition of their illustrious predecessors who, under the old regime, ruled medallic creation: " The Commission cannot omit to remark that the figure of the young, three-quarters naked woman intended to represent Abundance does not seem to conform very well to the allegoric idea of that person any more than to her most certain ancient types; whether she is assimilated to Ceres or even to Fortune, Abundance should be dressed like a matron in the fullness of her fecundity, characterized by her body, and not nude and virginal, recalling a Venus or even a Diana." "Finally, the figure in question carries in an apparently never used way the horn of abundance, the only attribute which could make her recognizable and which is hardly characteristic of her."
On the margin of the latter President Pelouze made the note: "These remarks are well-founded. Present this letter to the next meeting."
Dantzell's first drawing has not come down to us and the minutes of the following meeting are dumb in regard to the discussion, but in view of the final medal we may think that the criticisms of the Academy were without effect, because Abundance really has the silhouette of a three-quarters naked young beauty who detachedly holds a small horn-shaped shell, negligently pointed behind her.

The Committee and progress in the technique of striking.
The archives of the committee are interesting not only for their documents on procedures and techniques but also for the records of the research carried out in the nineteenth century to improve manufacturing and practical production, to the honor of the workshop for medals. The areopagus of five received the reports, consulted the responsible persons, examined the tests, got up out of their armchairs and went into the workshop, suggested improvements.
At the same time that the committee took charge of the tools of the old Medal Mint, establishing the sad state of the collection, it inquired about the method of striking. Its first intervention into this domain was critical; it rebelled.
"The committee has taken leave to remark that when medals are being struck too much force is being used and too many men are being used on the press. It is also the custom to strike two blows of the press before the flans are re-annealed. The copper being hardened by the first blow, the second blow doesn't produce any effect unless it is to alter the dies. It is perhaps necessary to strike with less force and to re-anneal after each strike. The President proposes to have trials made whether more satisfying results may not be obtained by following these suggestions." ( Meeting of 23 March 1833.)
Thus the committee reformed the practices, but it also applied itself to innovations. To restore the public taste for medals as monuments of art and of history was above all to put a modern technique, the object of constant improvements, at the service of esthetic research.
Certainly the influence of the committee seems to have been very modest in this last area, and the blame can be put on the lack of funds, the formation of the medallists, a poorly understood tradition, the tone of the times. But a search of the archives reveals its sustained interest in everything concerning engraving and manufacturing, its permanent concern to produce better and faster. It took part in the progress, brought about the perfection of processes hitherto unusable and, more particularly, made bronze technology take the decisive step which placed that alloy at the head of common coin medals. The beginning of that undertaking goes back to the first semester of 1832. The president of the Coin and Medal Commission sent the Minister a note (undated) which begins thus:
"Medals and jetons are usually struck in copper. which is afterwards given the color of bronze by a particular process, which has led to their being improper;y called bronze medals.
Since ancient times it has been known that copper is totally changed, and very quickly, by acids or, over long periods of time, by plain water, to such an extent that whether because the ancients adopted the rule of striking only in bronze or whether all those of copper have since been destroyed by various causes none have survived to our times except the bronze ones."(That is not true, but that does not concern us here.)
A glance back at the expression "the color of bronze" in the first paragraph provides us with an interesting expansion:
"The aim of this bronze color is to imitate the patina, that is to say, that ancient varnish which the old medals have acquired from age. The touch of the hands, the action of the air, humidity, and other agents change the natural color of clean copper or bronze and give medals a dirty and disagreeable appearance in place of the uniform and less changeable one they are intentionally given by imitating the patina which the antiquarians value so highly."
Here is the famous patina we call chocolate, justified and defined by several key words, varnish, uniform color, imitation of patina. Today we use the work patina to designate a chemical operation of artificial aging; in the last century (other manuscripts confirm this) they talked about putting on the color, which shows that the raw struck medal was really painted and not submitted to the controlled action of certain chemicals.
After having shown the advantages of bronze to the Minister, the president explained how to soften the sheets of bronze by soaking them in a bath of cold water after heating them. This technique, which hardens steel, produces the inverse effect on bronze. Then he recalled the experiments of Monge, who had coins struck on flans heated red, a process copied from the ancients, and he underlined the improvements brought about by Tiolier. This latter man engraved dies in bronze to strike "bean-shaped pieces of gold, silver, copper or bronze" and thus made perfect imitations of some of the most beautiful Greek coins. Finally. de Sussy indicated the current direction of the research:
"To succeed in making bronze medals less difficult to strike, particularly when they are in very high relief, it has been proposed that we substitute for the copper or bronze flans, castings made from moulds prepared from the same subject we want to reproduce...[sic] Mr. Chandet, assayer of the old Medal Mint, performed a series of experiments on manufacturing medals...[sic] he concluded from his observations that the perfecting of medals cast in this way would take fewer than half the number of blows of the press necessary for rolled flans."
On 24 May 1832 the Minister agreed to this program and officially ordered the Consulting Committee of Engravers to follow the work and evaluate the results.
Three days earlier the engraver Galle, a member of the Institute and the committee, had been officially advised by letter of his nomination as reporter and invited to submit his report on the first of June. If this document ever was submitted it has disappeared, but we have an impressive number of minutes telling about the presentation to the committee of experiments with various alloys. The technicians were groping in the dark. Jullien, representing de Collet, Director of Manufacturing; Salin, Comptroller; Bruant, examiner of trial pieces; all blackened paper and wasted a good number of pieces. Richard, a private founder, knew a period of great prosperity. Among the numerous problems which came up on was particularly hard: above a certain diameter the cast metal which replaced the flan is slightly smaller than the original subject because of the shrinkage the metal undergoes as it cools. This well-known phenomenon prevented perfect coincidence of the reliefs of the casting with the engraving of the die, and Breant contrived expedients: "I have directed Mr. Salin, the cointroller for the striking of medals, to send you models which will be suitable for moulding, prepared by the application of stamped and glued paper in a manner to give them a little more relief, with the aim of compensating for the contraction the medals undergo upon cooling."
In the papers of d'Arcet is one (12 August 1833) in the writing of Breant attributing that cleverness to Sir Aime de Puymaurin, Director of the Medal Mint from 1824 to 1830. If progress was swamped in regard to research in physics, in October 1833 the combat seemed won as far as chemical analysis was concerned. The old alloy was discovered: eighty six parts of copper to fourteen of tin, with all other components excluded, most particularly zinc. However, d'Arcet, whom we meet officially for the first time, disputes the results and claims that he has found only five parts of tin, which makes the committee rejoice; the striking will be easier. The two chemists continue to oppose each other on the results of the annealing, but d'Arcet, the director of the trials, takes the affair in hand and imposes his point of view. Moreover, the engravers are ordered, by the pen of their president, to employ the patination by ammonium hydrosulfate which he has perfected, because the precast bronze shows dirty streaks which are not totally concealed by the old technique of coloring.
On 22 February 1834 the committee finally establishes the use of the perfected processes in all stages of manufacturing:"The Director of Minting at the Medal Mint showed the committee a great number of medals of various diameters and reliefs, cast in bronze and finished in the press, struck to be delivered to the people who had ordered them, which did not require to bring them to the desired point of perfection nearly as many blows from the press as would have been needed for copper flans. After examining the results the committee recognized that they offer very satisfactory results in respect to the imprint and in respect to the color or patina. It will occupy itself with this object in a future session."
The latter was held on the following first of March, the president then reading a report by Salins, Director of Manufacturing. This official explained the advantages of bronze, its resistance to shocks, the solidity of the new patina, stated that "the dies do not show more fatigue now because a medal cast in bronze requires a smaller number of blows of the press to be finished." In conclusion he claims, paradoxically, that "when a certain number of medals cast in bronze have to be struck, twenty five for example, with a size no more than twenty two lines (50 mm.), the manufacture offers the advantage of economy by requiring fewer annealings and fewer strokes of the press; the director is thus interested in executing medals cast in bronze in this case."
The committee invited the administration to pursue these experiments. It reported the good results and requested permission to try to obtain similar results for medals of more than twenty two lines "in which case casting and striking offer particular difficulties because of the contraction the material undergoes upon cooling." The engravers voted for a new alloy decreed by d'Arcet: 90 parts copper, 4 tin, 6 brass. From then on bronze seems to have won the battle. However, whatever the optimistic views of the technicians were, copper was always preferred, particularly for the large sizes, and in 1847, after a series of breakages, the alert committee saw the return to the exclusive use of copper. It would not be before the end of the century, after the discovery of the first modern steels and the installation, after 1885, of new presses driven by steam, that "the ancient alloy" definitely replaced copper.

The archives of the company contain more precious information about various aspects of the techniques. We mention here only the reserved reception it accorded on 27 November 1841 the decision to have the mark of the director and the name of the material employed placed on the edge;; finally convinced of the sound basis of this measure, the committee arranged to have the punches applied before and no longer after the coloring.
A letter of Lagrange, the future engraver general, attracts more attention: on 12 July 1876 he wrote "I have the honor to inform you that the English reducer to whom I was forced to address myself for the agricultural wreaths you kindly ordered from me did not understand my instructions and made me reductions too large for the requested medals", valuable evidence for the use of that technique at a period when direct engraving still ruled. For a very long time after, for the generation of artists was already arising which was enslaved by the perfection of mechanics and refused close combat with the metal, less in the realm of creation, for the minutes of the sessions reveal to us abundantly that the Rotys, the Ponscarmes, the Chaplains did not disdain taking up the scorper and the burin when it was a question of honoring the commands of the committee, of raising a punch from some historic master die or of renewing a die signed Roettiers, Duvivier, Brenet.

[I have omitted the sections on guarantee punches and coinage.]

Organization of the profession of engraving.
This organization was incorporated in May of 1848 during the first weeks of republican rule. Not at all unknown to the administration, this initiative had received its approval; the organizing meeting of 16 May was held in the library of the mint, a place also used by the consulting committee, and the minutes of the meeting are preserved in the archives of the museum. In them are found all the great names of the profession; Gatteaux was elected president and Domard vice-president. The former explained that "in many circumstances, observations having been made to the higher administration of the fine arts in regard to different decisions which would have been more satisfactory if the artists had been consulted, the response was not to receive them, based on the claim that since the artists were not organized they could not have been consulted regularly. All the artists with the single exception of the medal engravers are now organized."
It was necessary to act fast; the organization was informed immediately about two points: the participation in the Salon which was already compromised by the intransigence of the copper-plate engravers, who, already organized, took for themselves the lion's share on one hand and on the other the mint contest. After having obtained from the committee the supplementary delays for submitting dies and punches, the engravers took in hand the future of medals, trying to indoctrinate the new government with the utility of medals and suggesting a program of which the first piece would be a commemorative of the revolution. They proposed to establish a jury of four members, talking of having recourse to the Academy as far as concerned the choice of subject ("It is not proper that each minister can have medals made by caprice" and the use of copper for the manufacture. "They should not be gold or silver except in very rare cases, because those last medals are very expensive to the government which gives them and are immediately melted down by those who receive them. The mint administration should retain manufacturing of medals and jetons ordered by the government and by the constituted bodies. It should also undertake to do the manufacturing the public entrusts to it. However, the making of private medals and jetons should be free but submitted to regulations like those of book publishing." This comparison to books was baaed on the hope for complete liberalization of production.
On May 26 the assembly approved a proposition of Gatteaux tending to make uniform at fifty millimeters all government medals and suggesting other subjects for medals: "Abolition of the penalty of death for religious beliefs", "abolition of slavery", "Manifesto of the provisional government to foreign powers". The idea is not explicit, but this concerns nothing less than the renewal by the republic of the Gallery of Louis XIV. Upon reflection recourse to the Academy was limited to a competence in composing legends.

On June 9, faced with the ill-will of the Minister of the Interior concerning the participation of the engravers in the jury of the Salon, the assembly took the offensive on another front: "Citizen Minister: The press is free; why then are we still forced to request authorization in order to have our works struck at the mint? The medal engravers have the honor of begging you, in the name of liberty, to release them from that formality, which is a restraint on them.
Greeting and Fraternity."
On 7 July Dantzell proposed requesting an increase to the budget of twenty thousand francs, intended for the maintenance of the old dies, and a modification of the constitution of the Consulting Committee. The first point was judged inopportune and rejected, the second accepted. (This would be the origin of the modifications adopted by the decree of 19 February 1842, frequency of meetings every two months and re-election of members every two years by three fifths, with immediate re-eligibility.)
On 21 July was drawn up the constitution of the Society of Medal Engravers, which provided Draconian conditions of admission and commented "The engravers should understand that they should not compete with each other" and that "they should not execute engraved works in the name of those who do not personally exercise the special engraving of medals". All of the producers who lived off engravers without ever touching a burin found themselves thrown out.
On 4 August some of the artists (surely troublemakers) requested that in order to inform the Society of the fairness of the distribution of work by the committee, a list of them should be at the disposition of everyone. The majority declared itself against that disclosure "for the reason that one could look at the minutes" and because such mistrust could injure their colleagues chosen to sit on that board.
The sessions became less frequent. They still unsuccessfully tried to get a pension for Eugene Dubois from the Minister of the Interior and a consulting place on the Commission of Fine Arts for the utilization of funds intended for artistic production.
On 24 November 1848 the session adjourned sine die, but the engravers had learned how to organize and had tasted liberty. We are not very far from the time when the Ponscarmes and Chaplains resigned noisily from the Consulting Committee because of the failure of the Minister of Finances to confirm the election of their colleague Tasset because he was in disgrace (1884). The engravers now knew that they were creative artists with the same title as painters or sculptors and no longer just able but domesticated artisans. This emancipation, which had already been manifested to the committee during the short period of the second republic, appeared plainly beginning in 1871 and entailed, little by little, the disappearance of the Consulting Committee. Sessions became less frequent; they met no more often than three times a year. On February 1885, after having held an ordinary meeting, the members separated without knowing that they had closed forever a chapter in the history of French numismatics. The Consulting Committee was dead, and direct engraving into steel became lethargic.