Speaker
Description
The identities of the engravers of James VI’s 9th Scottish coinage (1605-9) have not been satisfactorily established in the secondary literature. Burns (1887) and Cochran-Patrick (1875 and 1876) posited conflicting attributions. Cochran-Patrick ascribed the work to Thomas Foulis, an engraver based at the Edinburgh mint, whereas Burns credited James Acheson, an engraver employed at the Tower Mint, London. Burns’ attribution is echoed by Bateson and Holmes (2017), Galloway (1986), and Farquhar (1908).
This paper will utilise published and unpublished Scottish mint records and conduct a detailed study of relevant coins in the collection of The Hunterian museum, Glasgow, to demonstrate that the 9th coinage was jointly engraved by both Foulis and Acheson. These sources will also be used to distinguish between the coins engraved by Foulis and Acheson. Overall, this will serve to illustrate how engravers at the Scottish and English mints cooperated to design and produce the 9th coinage.
