I am going to jump forward a few years from 2007 to 2011 because the following is associated with the Mary Rose commission and it seems a natural follow on.
I received a letter from the Westminster Coin Company. It read, ” Your tactile copy of the 16th century Anthony Roll painting of Henry VIII’s Mary Rose is beautiful – and it seems to lend itself perfectly to a coin that we are looking to design for the 500th anniversary of the completion of the Mary Rose.” They wanted to know if I would give my permission for them to engrave the image on a coin to be issued by Jersey. WOW .
I contacted them and said I would love to be part of it and what did I have to do. Apparently nothing. Just send them a professional photo of the painting ( all my paintings are professionally photographed) and they would create the coin. How they could do this was beyond my imagination and they were not about to tell me.
Only a few years before I had not even picked up a paint brush and now one of my favourite tactile paintings was going to be produced on a commemorative coin. Life is so interesting, we never know what is around the corner.
I could not help thinking of that chance meeting with John Lippiett at a party, a commission to make a tactile painting for the Mary Rose Museum and now a commission for a Mary Rose coin.
There is an old saying, I think it was Confucius ” Every day opportunity knocks on your door, it is up to you if you let it in”. Well my door wide is always wide open.
Shortly after, I received a black and white image of the design and I loved it. I gave my permission for it to be reproduced and lo and behold the coins were made. All of them sold out very quickly.
I received my fee, and then signed over 900 certificates to accompany each coin. Now that was hard work, I had to do them in batches of 50, or the signature would bear no resemblance to mine.
I love all history and recently wrote the family history for the children to keep and pass on, They now have a coin each to add a coin to this collection is both strange and wonderful.