Thread by @IronsideKate

Monday: 50th anniversary of UK coins #Decimalday
Biggest revolution in UK currency for centuries
Dad designed the reverses
Mum was model for 50p Britannia
& I (as toddler) trashed key designs
Dad had to win not 1 but 2 competitions to become #decimal designer: a thread

1st secret competition run by @RoyalMintUK
The UK’s best artists & designers invited to compete.
Dad won.
His designs turned into sample coins, see below.
Then disaster. He got a call to go into the Mint….2/16

Deputy Master poured him a huge gin & said Govt going public with decimal plans but would be launching a 2nd competition, open to all
So Dad hadn’t won after all. He was devastated but….3/16

Next day he picked himself up & vowed to enter 2nd competition - anonymously - with new, better designs. He won the reverses again. Arnold Machin got the head 4/16

This is how the final designs began – doodles in a sketchbook 5/16

Then, at his desk in corner of living room, he turned them into fully drawn designs 6/16

Next he made circular plaster casts on kitchen table. Back at his desk, he’d carve out the designs in reverse on the casts, then pour more plaster into the delicate moulds to create 3D versions of designs 7/16

He needed a model for the 50p’s Britannia. Step forward my mother, who sat clutching large ruler as trident and a paper as her frond….8/16

Amid controversy over lack of women on UK currency (great campaign by @CCriadoPerez) Mum has actually spent more than 40 years on our coins as Britannia. Only Queen has been on coins longer.
Mum recreates the pose decades later for @BBCTheOneShow 9/16

WFH dangers just same in 1960s. As a toddler, I escaped from cot at 6am, climbed on desk and trashed a key set of plaster designs just hours before they were due to be delivered to @RoyalMintUK. 10/16

Took 6 yrs before final designs were complete – they would become the longest lasting set of UK coin designs 11/16

My brother, born at end of those yrs, has middle name Decimus, normally a name Romans gave to 10th child but Dad said he couldn’t stretch to 10.
Later we all went to Buckingham Palace to watch Dad get OBE 12/16

Designs then spent decades in portfolios under my parents’ bed.
Arrival of grandchildren (best game bouncing on Granny’s bed) drove Mum to donate designs to @britishmuseum to keep them safe.
Fab curator @fearandsequins shows kids their grandfather’s work 13/16

Baton now passed to great young designer Matthew Dent who designed the latest reverses. 14/16
mattdent.com

Final word to Dad, writing in 1969: “Can there be a man so pompous & conceited …that he would not admit excitement beyond measure at prospect of designing a coinage, frustration, fury, anguish & all…. 15/16

“His work which he has sweated blood over will be published in vast quantities and gazed at by millions…not because he is a genius, a saint or a monster – merely because he is a coin designer.” Christopher Ironside 1913-1992 ENDS