Reducing silver waste and Magnificent Handwriting of Coiner's Clerk
RogerB
Posts: 8,852 ✭✭✭✭✭
The content of this short letter is interesting in that the Chief Coiner (A.L. Snowden) suggests that residual zinc in refined silver causes brittle ingots and excess waste.
However, I'm also posting it because of the wonderful handwriting of Snowden's clerk. The only parts of this letter that are typeset are the heading, location and year "1869." Everything else is in this clerk's incredible manuscript - letter forms and connections, spacing, alignment, line interval - everything in this must have made him the envy of all others at the Philadelphia Mint. I do not have the clerk's name - it might be Theodore K. Vogel who was the minor coin clerk.
[RG104 E-1 Box 084 1869]
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Comments
Cool!
Would love to have that handwriting style digitized and useable. Pretty awesome! My second grade teacher (Miss Rice) would have been proud. She hated my work.
My father's handwriting was like this, to this day I don't understand how someone could be so meticulous with a pen.
He was born in 1922, so it was probably mandatory, I imagine all his brothers and his sister had similar handwriting.
Me? Mine looks like a chicken with mad-cow disease walked across an inkpad and stumbled onto a pad of paper, only a little worse!
If he were to look at my cursive school work he would have assumed I was 4 years old and writing with my left foot.
Collector of randomness. Photographer at PCGS. Lover of Harry Potter.
The letter is written in a modified “Spencerian Script” which was developed P. Rogers Spencer about 1840. It was one of the standard penmanship styles taught during the 19th century - up to about 1925. After then, the simpler Palmer modified script was taught. There are self-teaching guides to “Spencerian Script” and some community colleges also offer classes.
Beautiful penmanship and good history lesson. Thanks.
I wonder why the extra curl over the lower case 'r'. Beautiful handwriting, indeed, though.
Of course, it pales to what this guy is doing:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=KvSyQDu49pI
Keeper of the VAM Catalog • Professional Coin Imaging • Prime Number Set • World Coins in Early America • British Trade Dollars • Variety Attribution
Very beautiful penmanship, it's so perfect that if I didn't know better i would assume it was computer generated, definitely becoming a lost art.
Handwriting is overrated. Trying to universally force that level of artistry on our young children is a total waste. Better to teach them critical thinking skills and language so that what they write is far more important than how it looks on paper. If they are gifted artistically that is another matter altogether, but most people aren't born that way and trying to pretend they are is stupid.
Love that penmanship, wish mines were like that, thanks for sharing !!!
Amazing penmanship... sadly, a vanishing skill today...many schools have abandoned it. I understand that times change (damn, I have sure seen a lot of change), and with the technology of today, it is not really required (email, computers et al)....However, for those of us that learned it, and employed it (however well or poorly), it is a pleasure to see such writing. Cheers, RickO