Further, to the featured web page in the last E-Sylum, and leaving aside the recent release of a high-relief silver dollar by Perth Mint that recreates the Sydney Cove medallion design, a number of matters concerning that original are worthy of note.

1. Wedgwood commissioned his good friend Erasmus Darwin to compose some verse to celebrate the new medallion. The opening lines are inscribed on the new Wedgwood plate packaged with the new dollar by Perth Mint:

2. Wedgwood and Darwin were both Lunaticks, members of Birmingham's Lunar Society that met in the homes of both Erasmus Darwin and Matthew Boulton of Soho Mint fame.

3. Wedgwood's son Robert married Darwin's daughter Emma. One of their children was Charles Darwin. Wedgwood's money helped bankroll Charles' studies of natural history.

4. Wedgwood did not make the medallions with his own hands. He simply ordered staff to. The design is by Henry Webber, Wedgwood's chief sculptor, with the final mould finishing done by William Hackwood, Wedgwood's principal modeler. The Wedgwood Museum site describes the medallions as having a caneware ceramic body with an ornamented and sprigged decoration.

5. Three different clay types were sent to Sir Joseph Banks from Sydney. All were passed to Wedgwood. The Mitchell library reports that the medallions were produced in three distinct colors: pale cream, brown and black depending on the clay used.

6. Replicas exist. The originals Sydney were impressed on the reverse with a backstamp "MADE BY IOSIAH WEDGWOOD OF CLAY FROM SYDNEY COVE." This stamp does not appear on later issues.

7. Measurements of surviving medallions vary. Three in the Mitchell collection are catalogued as 56 mm across and two as 67 mm. It is unclear if these measurements are of external diameters or of that of the internal bounding rim

8. While Wedgwood entitled the medallion, "Hope encouraging Art and Labour under the influence of Peace to pursue the employments necessary to give security and happiness to an infant settlement", his family referred to it simply as by the "The Botany Bay Medal", showing they were geographically-challenged.

9. Below the neo-classical figures is the legend ETRURIA 1789. Etruria was the name given by Josiah Wedgwood to his factory in 1769 in honour of the ancient Etruscans whose ceramic art had so inspired him. At the time polite society regarded the Etruscans as the ultimate Noble Savages.

10. Webber's design provided the inspiration for first Great Seal of New South Wales, as approved by King George III in 1790. The design can be seen today in the 1892 door panel in the Chief Secretary's Building in Sydney. A more recent used was for a commemorative plaque marking the opening of the Opera House in Sydney in 1986. And it has long been the symbol of The Wedgwood Society of New South Wales.

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:FEATURED WEB PAGE: THE SYDNEY COVE MEDALLION(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v13n11a26.html)