Great pics! Great designs! Great medals! It's the high quality in medals like those that has made and kept me a buyer of such Chinese medals. It's hard to imagine someone seeing these but not being able to appreciate the quality and aesthetic beauty. .
Awesome looking medals! It would be difficult for me to understand if someone could look at these medals, and regardless if they like the subject depicted or not, feel that these medals aren't high quality craftsmanship. I mean, just look at them. Wow! Amazing craftsmanship. .
barsenault is learning.. The trick with these is to aim the eye/camera at a fairly perpendicular angle to where the highest points of the design's relief are "cut away." There you'll see the most extreme differences that make these things really pop. Of course, photos & videos will never do these justice.. The technology to truly capture just isn't there. Thanks for the cool photos, b!
thanks Gatito. I can't wait to get to my Wutai. More art work, not high relief, however. No, this isn't gold. lol. It is brass God of Wealth, with beautiful box. 100 minted.
God of Wealth set looks nice in brass.. In Ag, too, for that matter! Give 'em credit, though, b.. Although they look pretty wimpy compared to a mega ultra-high-relief medal, go ahead & put them side by side next to an ASE or Kook or something. Going from memory, they've got fat bellies, at least. There is definitely some relief there! Just that we've been spoiled by this point, heh..
Pressed / stamped metal (virtually all coins are pressed) has its limits in terms of high relief. Cast metal has virtually no limit. Each process has its challenges and difficulties. The above God of Wealth medal looks pressed / stamped while medals like the Shenyeng Palace (in original post) looks cast. But I am by no means an expert so if someone else who does actually know a lot about this can confirm or correct my assumptions, that would be helpful. .
I don't think any of these medals are cast.. They are minted/pressed, but using different equipment & techniques. barsenault has mentioned in the past that these dies don't last very long. If they were cast, you would be able to tell from various imperfections found in cast pieces.. They also wouldn't be able to get all these amazing details.
For sure I am no expert but it's hard for me to believe that some of the extreme high relief medals like the Dazu Rock Carvings, Xi-Shi Holding a Pearl, and World Heritage series [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCIkMKFpb6k&feature=youtu.be [/youtube] are pressed. I just can't imagine a press strong enough to get such extreme relief. Now for other Chinese medals that are merely high relief (like all the panda ones), I would readily believe that these are pressed because the relief is low compared to the extreme relief medals. But I could be wrong. .
There are defintitely dies used to mint/press them.. Otherwise, there's no way you could get such full & amazing details. How they produce the *blanks* is another story, though. Which method, I have no idea. Though I'm guessing for the mega ultra-high-relief ones, they might create a rough shape first. Ancient Chinese secret?
Seems to be decent detail in these casting: http://video.mit.edu/watch/casting-a-bronze-mit-medallion-24954/ .
I have 3 versions of it. I prefer the golden color of brass. The 100 gram silver physically better than the 1 oz. I have list it in ebay.
