Marchands de Soie, Lyon

[Ian]

A nice three dimensional silver jeton by Bonnet commemorating the reunion of the three silk merchant guilds of Lyon in 1882.

 

A similar jeton was previously issued in 1866 for the silk brokers/ merchants bearing the same obverse but with a different reverse.

 

[bill]

Wonderful medal. Are therestandard reference works that you use?

[Ian]

Wonderful medal. Are therestandard reference works that you use?

 

For jetons, the two main authors are Feuardent (in French) and Mitchiner (in English), however I don't find either to be particularly helpful in terms of history / purpose. I find that sales and auction catalogues often provide more detail and background than the `generalist' and rote catalogues.

 

CGB.fr is the place to go for a good understanding of the world of jetons. They maintain their jeton auction catalogues on line. A VERY useful resource. Gadoury also produced two hard back sales catalogues, one in 1986 the other in 1992....both excellent reference materials.

 

I have quite a few fields of interest within the subject of jetons one of which is jetons of the Assurance Companies of France (especially maritime assurance). The earliest i've seen is from the reign of Louis XIV and dated 1670. For that particular subject I refer to Raymond Gailhouste's `Numismatique de L'Assurance'.

 

Needless to say, for the majority of focused interests the only available literature is French, although for Franco - American jetons, Eduard Frossard produced a small booklet on that subjkect in 1899. I saw the ANA selling it at 25cents a copy in its recent sale. Usually it sells for over $5. Sadly for this true Scotsman, I already had a copy. I was almost tempted to buy another though.......... :-)

 

Ian

[Scottishmoney]

Tres belle

[bill]

Thank you. That's helpful.