Tetradrachm of Prusias, 180 B.C., from the Ancient Coins series (N180) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co. 1888

Curator: First glance? A ghost story told on a worn-out penny. There's something both fragile and ancient about it. Editor: Indeed. This is a print titled "Tetradrachm of Prusias, 180 B.C." from the "Ancient Coins" series by Wm. S. Kimball & Co., created in 1888. The medium includes drawing, coloured-pencil and watercolor. The original coin would, of course, have been struck much earlier. It now lives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Curator: Ah, so that’s why it whispers of time passed and empires crumbled. It's more than just a pretty picture of a coin. The way it’s rendered makes me feel the weight of history—each line a little crack in time. Editor: The use of coloured-pencil elevates what could be a mere copy into something intriguing. See how it imbues the coin's surface with an almost palpable sense of decay and recovery. And then the figure of Prusias himself... the symbols of leadership: posture, gaze and the suggestion of classical drapery. Curator: Totally. Like trying to conjure up a powerful ruler from faded memories. What catches my eye is how the artist captures that paradoxical nature of ancient coins – objects meant for trade that became testaments to civilization and a single leader’s grip on power. Even the decision to put it on paper in colored pencil from what probably once was struck in shining silver... It feels like a tender act of translation. Editor: Yes! The artist has clearly considered what such symbols meant, then and now. To recreate a symbol is a kind of reverence or perhaps, in its time, simple marketing hype, because Kimball was selling tobacco! Curator: Tobacco, huh? Suddenly I’m imagining weary scholars in smoke-filled rooms, arguing over the precise symbolism, between drags and card games. The image, though a drawing, has taken on the mythos of a memory for all parties! It has all this added cultural weight! Editor: It is as though we are looking into a past which they were recreating... and now here *we* are. Ultimately it speaks of symbols enduring, transforming across millennia. Curator: A very powerful message. I see something entirely different now that you've clarified how the message evolves and repeats through different cultural layers. Editor: Likewise, I initially saw just the history in a faded representation but you see the possibilities of artistic exploration by the printmakers! Thank you!