Catalog Reference

Adams-Bentley 7
A.J.N., IX, 28

We know of two silver strikes of the medal produced for John Stewart (whose name sometimes appears spelled Steward). As noted in the Adams and Bentley book, they are in the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna. A single bronze specimen exists in private hands. Adams and Bentley lists two cliches, both of the obverse. We can add another, now in the National Numismatic Collection at the Smithsonian Institution, previously in Stack's ALTO II sale of October 1991 as lot 1399 but with a long earlier provenance: Frossard's sale of the Isaac F. Wood Collection, February 1884, lot 1450; the Chapman brothers' Isaac F. Wood Collection sale, July 1894, lot 578; New Netherlands' 40th sale, May 1953, lot 511. That brings the total to three, which happens to be the same number of "shells" included in lot 22 of the 1933 Senter sale; presumably that trio was some combination of cliches and electrotypes? Bushnell bought two electrotype shells from Strobridge's sale of June 1863, lot 1167. Perhaps those two shells and one of these splashers ended up in Senter's exceptional holding.

Stewart's original silver medal was last described in the possession of the family in 1897. It may still survive. Several institutions hold only electrotypes or crude casts. The exceptionally crude cast in the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation collection, whose distinctiveness comes from its innate flaws rather than the die state of the medal that produced it, was purchased on a Baltimore bourse floor by your cataloger for a princely two-digit sum before its donation to CWF's cabinet.

This was the only Stewart in any form in the John J. Ford, Jr. holdings, and it is likewise the only Stewart that was in the Adams Collection. LaRiviere never owned a Stewart in any form, nor did W.W.C. Wilson. Bushnell acquired electrotype shells from Strobridge's June 1863 sale, lot 1167, indicating how early specialist collectors knew they could give up on hopes of acquiring a genuine example. Never copied by the Philadelphia Mint and never restruck in Paris, the John Stewart medal is the singular classic rarity of the Comitia Americana series.

The example to the left was sold by Stack's Bowers Galleries in the August 2020 Global Showcase Auction, where it realized $6,600.