Fig. 3.
The market weights are remarkable in bearing devices like the types of coins. For the most part they are square cakes and the devices simple almost to rudeness, yet they have that impress of style and grace in the design, with the large free handling in which is the exquisiteness of Greek art. A sketchiness so simple and easy can be the only right treatment for a metal so likely to receive injury in the use; to these as in all art so considered the inevitable injuries of wear are little loss. We can hardly suppose that such a simple industry as making lead weights for the markets would have had artists capable of designing, and suggesting in relief types like these, rather we may suppose that some of the great coiners furnished the models, especially as they would be issued by the authorities of the several towns.
We may take this first opportunity of remarking that the patterns for all ornament intended for casting should be modelled like these, never carved, as is now so universally the case for cast iron and the applied enrichments of picture frames, the reason being that cast material of this sort, so easily injured, is unsuited for giving definition and high relief, and should accept all the limitations of material frankly and make the most of dull suggestiveness; for in all these the “best are but shadows” the modelling emerging from or melting away in the ground. In two attempts the present writer has made in modelling for lead casting wax was used in one instance, and in the other, where very delicate relief was required made up mostly of threads and dots, gesso was found to answer.
Figs. 4 and 5.—Greek Weights.
The ram’s head (see [Fig. 4]) for instance has only the frontal, the lips, and the horn, made out, the rest the imagination sees transparently below the field. In the words of Blake “it is everything and nothing.” The raised rim is a good protection.
Figs. 6 and 7.—Greek Weights.
The [second], a half Mina of Ægina, is yet simpler—just a pot, but a beautiful one well placed. The [third] is Attic, a quarter Dimnoun with scarabeus-like tortoise. The [last] is a Mina of Ægina, it bears the well-known Greek rendering of the Dolphin and the letters Μ Ν Α Α Γ Ο Ρ. “Market Mina.” The dolphin has the “bowed back” Sir Thomas Browne pointed out as a “popular error” of painters, but the dolphin was to the Greek mind, rather the genius of the waving sea itself than any mere particular fish, and this is the time consecrated form, like this it swims amongst the undulating hair of the Arethusa of Syracuse, the most beautiful coin in the world.