HEAVY LITTLE OBJECTS

#49 :: Medal for the Elizabethan Club

Joe Reed crafted this, to commemorate the 75th Anniversary of Yale University's Elizabethan Club. It began life as a series of sketches, likely done in heavy graphite pencil, then inked for clarity of line. He then fashioned plaster-of-paris maquettes about 10 inches in diameter, carving them with Exacto blades and surplus dentist's tools. The maquettes were then translated into molds, and the medal was cast in solid bronze. It's different from the usual crisp, oversized-penny-styled medals usually bestowed at memorable occasions. Rough, almost brutish in its deeply gouged bas-relief features (QE I on the front, a phoenix rising on the reverse), it has a deeply rugged beauty. It is astonishingly heavy for its size (almost a pound at less than four inches in diameter), the sort of thing that, wrapped in a sock, could prove equally handy for dispatching a burglar or crushing ice. The artist takes commissions, and can be reached here.