Collecting Friends: An Unsung Coin Designer: Melecio Figueroa

An Unsung Coin Designer: Melecio Figueroa

Dennis: Steve, at a recent ANA convention I stopped by the combined table of the Liberty Seated Collectors Club and the Barber Coin Collectors Society. Our mutual friend John Frost was there, representing both organizations and welcoming visitors to join them (which I also recommend!).

In recent years John has done some amazing research into the lives of father-and-son U.S. Mint chief engravers William Barber and Charles E. Barber. He befriended the family (great-grandsons of Charles), and through them he’s shared a wealth of fresh information that changed the way numismatists think of the Barbers. Diaries, documents, portraits, and other historical artifacts transformed the popular opinion of Charles Barber in particular. Collectors used to think of the chief engraver as a difficult personality, a jealous artist who didn’t get along with others. Thanks to John Frost’s efforts and the generosity of Barber’s descendants, we now see him as a much warmer family man (“Dear Papa” to his loved ones), a respected co-worker at the Mint who was held in high regard by President Theodore Roosevelt. [Image: Researcher John Frost, president of the Barber Coin Collectors Society, has changed the way historians think of artist Charles E. Barber.]

About a third of the way through Charles Barber’s tenure as chief engraver of the United States Mint, 8,500 miles away in the Spanish colony of the Philippines, the celebrated Filipino artist Melecio Figueroa earned a high station in 1893. He was named grabador primero, or “first engraver,” of Spain’s royal mint in Manila, the Casa Moneda. Figueroa was a silversmith, sculptor, engraver, and art professor. By this time he had made a name for himself in his studies in Europe, won international art prizes, and earned private and government scholarships and pensions in the arts.

After the United States took control of the Philippines following the 1898 Spanish-American War, Figueroa entered and won the competition to design the coins for a new U.S./Philippine monetary system. The coins debuted in 1903 in bronze, copper-nickel, and silver. Unfortunately, Figueroa died of tuberculosis that summer, and he didn’t get to see his artwork spread throughout the islands as coin of the realm.

[Image: Dennis Tucker opines that Filipino artist and coin designer Melecio Figueroa should be as well-known as Barber.]

As a numismatic designer, in my opinion, Melecio Figueroa deserves to be as famous as Charles Barber. The two artists held similar posts in the Spanish and American mints. Barber was more productive in the scope of his work, of course—he had the full breadth of the U.S. Treasury’s “to do” list (commemoratives, circulating coins, national medals, patterns) to keep him busy. But Figueroa’s work has the distinction of appearing on the entire range of Filipino coinage, from the bronze half centavo to the silver peso. His coins were made in the tens of millions, his designs were minted on Philippine coins into the 1960s, and they circulated into the 1980s, far longer than Barber’s did.

[Image: One of Figueroa’s designs that was minted on silver coins in the tens of millions. Courtesy of Stack’s Bowers Galleries.]

Figueroa was only 61 years old when he died. I wonder what other coinage masterworks he might have created for the United States and the Philippines if he’d lived to 71, or 81?

Steve, is there an unsung coin designer whose work you particularly admire—one you think hasn’t gotten his or her due?

Steve: Dennis, first: thanks for introducing me to Melecio Figueroa who is a new name to me. I like a lot of the “one hit wonders” of U.S. coin design like Bela Lyon Pratt and his Indian Head gold $2.50 gold quarter eagle and $5 half eagle designs first minted in 1908, or Anthony de Francisci’s Peace dollar that started in 1921. Numismatists may contend that he also designed the 1920 Maine Centennial commemorative half dollar, but de Francisci largely prepared those designs based on another person’s design, though de Francisci showed his elegance in the lettering. 

[Image: 1920 Maine Centennial Half Dollar.]

I always wonder what Chester Beach, an American sculptor and medalist active in the first half of the 20^th century, would have done if he had more opportunities to design coins. Many of his design submissions have been lost and today he’s best-known for the under-loved 1923-S Monroe Doctrine Centennial commemorative half dollar. Its obverse shows the heads of James Monroe and John Quincy Adams and the reverse has the Western Hemisphere as two female forms. 

Cornelius Vermeule quipped in his book Numismatic Art in America on Beach’s 1923 half dollar, “The piece is not attractive; but if it can be called ugly, it must also be termed imaginative.” Vermeule adds, “The low, flat relief with an attempt at a feeling for modeling rather than carving makes the busts and the females poised to imitate the outline of the continents seem like mounted cut-outs.” Beach’s characteristic low relief worked better on carefully produced medals, though Vermeule used the word “pretentious” to describe his American Numismatic Society’s 1919 Peace of Versailles medal. 

[Image: 1928 Hawaiian Sesquicentennial Half Dollar.]

Chester Beach also designed the 1925 Lexington-Concord Sesquicentennial, a more conventional and straightforward design. What always surprises me when I’m going through commemoratives in the Red Book is that Beach executed Juliette May Fraser’s designs for the 1928 Hawaiian Sesquicentennial commemorative half dollar. His low relief succeeds here, where it didn’t quite work on the 1923 Monroe Doctrine half dollar, and makes me wonder what else he was capable of. 

Be on the lookout for another installment of Collecting Friends next month or subscribe here and never miss a post! In the meantime, explore beautiful coins from the ANA's Edward C. Rochette Money Museum Virtual Exhibits.

About the Collecting Friends Blog

Hello! And welcome to the ANA’s blog series, “Collecting Friends.”

We decided to approach this much like a conversation between friends. One of us starts with a topic, then the other responds. Simple as that. Along those lines, we’ll keep the tone conversational as much as possible. 

We both write about coins professionally, and will keep our relative style guides in our writing. For Dennis, former Publisher at Whitman Publishing, that means capitalizing “Proof” and italicizing Red Book and never saying anything bad about Ken Bressett, who’s awesome anyway. 

For Steve, who’s written with Coin World for 15 years, it means Winged Liberty Head dime instead of “Mercury” dime, and similar nuances and oddities. And, it means writing A Guide Book of United States Coins (better known as the “Red Book”). 

Both of us started collecting when we were little, introduced to coins by a chance encounter with an old coin that sparked our curiosity. One of Steve’s interests is coin valuation, and he gravitates towards the intersection of art and coins. Dennis enjoys medals and world coins, and studying modern U.S. coins in the context of older series, what came before.

We met in 2012 at the American Numismatic Association World’s Fair of Money in Philadelphia at an event hosted by the Austrian Mint where there was both a Ben Franklin and a Betsy Ross impersonator. We’ve become great friends in the past decade. We even were appointed together to sit on the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee starting in 2016, but Steve resigned soon after he was appointed to accept a full-time job at the Treasury Department while Dennis was re-appointed in 2020.

We taught a course together on numismatic publishing and writing a few years ago at the Summer Seminar, and while life has gotten in the way of us teaching another class, we jumped at our friend Caleb’s suggestion that we write a column. We hope you enjoy it! 

About the American Numismatic Association

The American Numismatic Association is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating and encouraging people to study and collect coins and related items. The Association serves collectors, the general public, and academic communities with an interest in numismatics.

The ANA helps all people discover and explore the world of money through its vast array of educational programs including its museum, library, publications, conventions and numismatic seminars.