Participant Medal - Columbian Exposition

The Columbian Exposition award medal is widely recognized as one of the finest medallic portraits of Christopher Columbus ever produced, though its conception and production was fraught by the famed conflict between America's greatest sculptor, August Saint-Gaudens, and the U.S. Mint's chief engraver, Charles Barber. Saint-Gaudens' original concept featuring a nude youth for the reverse met resistance and was abandoned for the busy and less skilled design by Barber that appeared on the reverse of the official, approved medal, creating a Jekyll and Hyde-like mating of designs and skill levels. The hubs and dies were produced by the U.S. Mint, while the actual striking of the medals was farmed out to the Scovill Manufacturing Company, which painstakingly produced 23,597 medals, creating and replacing the insert die for each individual awardee between strikings. The medals were ready only in 1896, long after the Expo had ended and closed.