From the Royal Mint Museum...
The Royal Mint Museum houses one of the finest coin collections in the world, containing some of the most outstanding rarities of the modern British coinage.
In an effort to share this national treasure more widely, an item from the Museum will be selected and explained each month on the Royal Mint website. Over a period of time these short notes will form a fascinating insight into the Royal Mint and the coins it has made for over 1000 years.
Ivory Coach Pass
As well as containing a great many rarities, particularly from the modern period, the Royal Mint collection also reflects an understandable interest in items that relate directly to the Mint as an institution and to the people who have worked there. This ivory coach pass, associated with a respected former Master of the Mint, William Wellesley Pole, is one such item.
Pole served as Master from 1814 to 1823, a period of office during which he fostered the maverick talent of Benedetto Pistrucci and successfully organised a major recoinage. Many of the pieces in the collection that relate to former Mint officials are portrait medals or plaques and it is therefore refreshing that the collection should have an entirely different type of Mint related item in the form of a beautifully preserved ivory pass.
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