Time Capsule - Counterfeiting as a Father Son Project

As a parent I naturally wonder what my sons will remember from their childhood.  What stories will they tell?  Perhaps, "Dad and I smelted lead and made fake currency".

Here's a trove of coins that were in a box up in the attic.  The 2004 date provides a useful bit of context but there are some details I don't remember.  The design on the coin is meant to be the pointy cap of a lawn gnome.  This is clearly homage to the combat robots we had made over the years, with the signature ceramic lawn gnome on top.  But by 2004 my mechanically inclined son was mostly out of that interest, so this was probably a project I started.  I do recall that after this prototype we went on to make something similar with a cross on it.  This was for our church's Summer Bible School which had a theme of "Market Place".  We had made and engraved the steel mold for the coins, fashioned blanks and on the spot hammered out currency that could be used in what was sort of a market place from the time of Christ.

Here's a better view.  I tinkered with the light filters quite a bit to draw out clarity and show how quickly soft metal gets damaged.  This made it look sort of golden.  It would be pretty easy to have gone with the ancient trick of putting a thin wash of "gold" over the top.

As to method, we made the blanks out of what we had on hand.  Lead.  Sure, it would not be a good idea to chew on these but neither would it have been prudent to chew on the fishing sinkers we melted down to make them.  Other soft metals also would have worked.  You can buy blanks made of pewter, which is mostly tin.  Gold and silver would have been workable options but frankly not economically plausible.  Copper is a bother to melt down, requiring three times the heat.

As to the basic design and the off strike, both are pretty authentic.  Here's a coin from Roman times remembering the assassination of Julius Caesar.  Note the knives, the inscription referencing the Ides of March....and the hat.

And here's a US coin of the pre-Civil War era.  Again with the hat.  So what's the deal?  And how does it connect with lawn gnomes?

It's a little complicated.  As you can see in the coin just above, this was called a Liberty Cap.  It is a concept that goes way back.  In ancient times there was a type of conical hat called a Pileus.  Originally it came from Greece but in Roman times it got its specific attributes.  When a Roman slave was freed, or manumitted, the praetor would touch him with a rod called a Vindicta.  His head would then be shaved and a Pileus cap would be placed on his head as a symbol of his new, free status.

The version of the cap that has a flopped over tip is actually called a Phrygian Cap.  This is also from Roman times and is associated with modern day Turkey.  On Trajan's column you can see prisoners wearing Phrygian Caps, so perhaps despite the similar look it did not have the same connotations.  The god Mithras wore one of these in his many depictions.

Circa 1790 the Phrygian Cap became a symbol of the French Revolution.  Technically they got it wrong, the Pileus would have been a better choice thematically.  But revolutions are confusing times and heck, the French may have thought the tipped point was just a bit jauntier.

As to the lawn gnome hats there is no tidy answer.  Certainly Europe has a long history of belief or at least interest in all manner of gnomes, pixies, fairies and such.  Figurines of these can be found going back to ancient times. Some of the Roman ones are pretty naughty.  But the use as garden decor seems to have begun not long after the French Revolution.  One can't exactly say that the people crafting gnomes for swank gardens circa 1800 simply perpetuated the mistake made by the French.  Lawn gnomes seem to be egalitarian in their hat selection wearing both the Pileus and Phrygian versions as suits them.  But there is a bit of Revolutionary influence nonetheless.  Traditional lawn gnomes almost always wear red hats, as did the mobs in the streets of Paris.

I'd keep a close eye on them just to be on the safe side.