Matthew Dent, a professional graphic designer, had seen the competition advertised in one of the national newspapers and he threw himself wholeheartedly into the project. As an artist his inspiration comes from many sources and he explored a number of options before finally developing his ideas for an heraldic set. The result is a set of coins firmly rooted in the heraldic traditions of the British coinage yet beautifully contemporary.

In seeking to spread a single design across six denominations, Matthew Dent conceived an idea that has never been realised before on the British coinage. To have the £1 as the unifying coin only emerged towards the end of the design process. Matthew Dent has commented that ‘the addition of the £1 coin design to the set was as a way of defining the whole series. A key coin uniting the designs’. Against all the odds, a young artist has won a public competition and devised a stunningly original series that stands as an imaginative and clever solution.

‘I felt that the solution to the Royal Mint's brief lay in a united design - united in terms of theme, execution and coverage over the surface of the coins. I wondered about a theme of birds or plants, but also considered buildings and coastal scenery. The issue with this for me lay in their distribution; how to represent the whole of the United Kingdom over six coins. The idea of a landscape appealed to me; perhaps using well-known landscapes from different areas around the United Kingdom which could stretch off the edge of one coin onto another. This seemed like a good solution but I also wanted to look at other options and themes.

I thought the six coins could make up a shield by arranging the coins both horizontally, as with the landscape idea, as well as vertically, in a sort of jigsaw style. I liked the idea and symbolism of using the Royal Arms, where individually the coins could focus on specific elements and when placed together they reveal the complete Royal Arms.

I found the idea that members of the public could interact with the coins the most exciting aspect of this concept. It's easy to imagine the coins pushed around a school classroom table or fumbled around with on a bar - being pieced together as a jigsaw and just having fun with them.’

Matthew Dent