 The Festival of Coins is brought to you in partnership with the Numismatic Guarantee Corporation and the Royal Mint Museum. Okay, so welcome to this live interview with Chris Barker from the Royal Mint Museum. We're really glad to have Chris here today as part of the Festival of Coins and we'll be just discussing Chris's career at the museum, his role, that kind of thing. So Chris, welcome along, thanks for coming along. Pleasure. I'd like to start, if I care with you, just talking a bit about your career and how you became interested in coins in the first place. Yeah, of course. It's accidental really that I ended up down in the museum, the Royal Mint Museum. It was never an intention of mine to actually go out there and find a career with coins. I did a history undergraduate and worked for a couple of years and then I went back and did a masters in heritage management and when I finished that I was sort of looking for a heritage based job and the one in Cardiff Museum came up and had a go at it and applying for it and I got it and I'd never studied coins before in my life, never studied Numismatics in any way shape or form before I came down here. My interest was history and heritage and that will be, I started 10 years ago next February so I'm still here so clearly it's held my interest over that time. Excellent and do you think, say you kind of, you didn't study coins or anything but you did history, obviously there's a link between coins and history. Do you think you kind of, do you think, did you realise how much history there is in coins? Yeah, I mean from the history that I studied, we touched at times on coinage generally but it was only really when I got down here that you start to really, or at least myself personally anyway, I started to see coins as the fantastic sources that they are of history. The one that I always like and use as a good example is the coinage of the Commonwealth during, after the Civil War. We've got this very heraldic coinage, all these principles of the Commonwealth and sweeping away all the popery and you disappear all the Latin inscriptions of the coinage that's previously been on there, you've got the English on there and then you contrast that with the start of the Commonwealth, what happens when Cromwell becomes effectively a military dictator and you see Cromwell on there as this almost Roman emperor-esque figure and on the reverse you've got this crowned arms with Cromwell's arms in the centre and you're thinking particularly those two really do demonstrate the moment of time, you know Commonwealth being the principles of the Commonwealth and then with Cromwell coming to power and effectively being king in all but name and using coins to read history and as sources of history, I think it's something that having gone through a history degree is probably not brought to the fore as much as it could be because they really do tell a different story to what you get sometimes in texts. Yes yeah well that I mean that was one of my questions we've kind of come onto it already is you know do you think coins are fully appreciated in the academic world I guess of history but also just just generally you know people are so interested in history and heritage that do they often pick up on the coins? I think they have, the coinage seems to fit into this niche when it's to come into the academic world of being the ancient world, coinage is often referred to back then and you often get them brought up when they're talking about the ancient world, ancient world in Rome and Greece and they use the sources quite regularly but then because written sources become more prevalent as you're going through history the middle ages they seem to just ditch the coinage and revert to texts not all the time but I do think they get overlooked certainly in the later periods and the early modern and the more modern periods there's an awful lot there that you can take from them that isn't really fed into contemporary historical thought and I think it's a shame because they used this such a wonderful resource for ancients and you know Roman and Greek history and then it's just feel like there's almost this will ditch that now we've got texts we've got written sources we've got archaeology we're doing to bother with the coinage so I would like to see them used more widely and one of the things we would like to do certainly in the museum is encourage students of the of you know the early modern and the more modern periods to study coinage more generally and think about what you can get out of that from a history perspective. Excellent yeah that's that's so interesting yeah certainly with ancient ancient coinage that immediately you think of the history and stories and the propaganda but yeah yeah okay so so when you um you started the Roman Museum was there a particular coin or a story that captured your imagination kind of convinced you that you were in the right place? I think there was a couple of things when I started that really sort of captured my attention firstly when I my my first week here you know February 2012 the first week that I came down here um one of the first things I saw in the museum was the Olympic medals because this is prior to the 2012 Olympics you know it's nothing that's been released yet and I came to the museum one of the first things I got to handle and look at was the Olympic medals which were going to be issued that summer and that was a real wow wow moment for me um really spectacular and then another thing that really got me and captured me my my attention was when I had a tour of the collection given to me by my Graham Dyer you know he's been at the museum for for an awfully long time and well known in the numismatic world and he just really brought it to life for me the stories and the history and the and it that captured my imagination and seeing the objects as well and appreciating their beauty. Gold nobles one of the first things I remember looking at and thinking wow these are stunning stunning objects and it's gone on from there really yeah excellent okay so I wonder if you could tell us a bit about your kind of day-to-day role at the museum what you kind of get up to and and um yeah just just your day-to-day role it's very varied and yet again that's another thing which I enjoy about it is that because of primarily what I do is I'm provide information whether that's information to the public or whether that's information to my colleagues within the Royal Mint so from the public side of things we're dealing with lots of inquiries we get coin examination set coin sent in for examination rather um so that's all very varied because the public ask all sorts of different questions and that will take you down routes and avenues that you might never have explored before yet again something that's brilliant to pick up on research and concepts you haven't looked at even in 10 years have been here and there's the the the Mint side of things where you're helping support the Mint and its business activities so particularly when it comes to um developing copy on pneumismatic themes so when they're launching the sovereign every year they'll develop copy and I'll be involved in helping shape what that copy might look like and uh giving them ideas for what what could go in there and thinking well it's you know uh 2021 have you thought about x anniversary or this anniversary so it's it's using and applying that pneumismatic knowledge that I have to help out from a business perspective as well so you've got two very slightly different things going on there and it's that mix of the commercial and um and the more pure museum I suppose that uh that a driven day-to-day and on a final point if you've made that there's the um the other side that we're involved with in the museum which is coin design which is not something people expect but the museum is heavily involved in the current coin design process so I um help prepare papers for the roman advisory committee which decides on new coins and metal designs to the UK I also did the legislative legwork of that as well afterwards so I prepare submission documents to the chancellor and to the the palace for approval of those designs so being involved in the current and contemporary side of the design process is fascinating yeah I'd love to see the new artwork as it comes through excellent so that's your kind of your kind of the part of the history of the roman then aren't you if you're if you're involved in that such an official process yeah and and there's there is a lot of rationale behind it from our perspective because by being involved in that it means that we can then archive the artwork and the and the plaster models and the modeling more generally as soon as the committee's finished with it and it can find its way down into our library for future reference and we've got a we've got a fantastic um collection of artwork down there stretching back to sort of the late 19th century um and what we're trying to do is is sort of that custodian role adding to it for the next generation of people like myself who will be doing this in 30 40 years time to help tell the story of now really excellent do you think you or anyone at the museum influences the actual the actual design of a particular coin I mean I guess no not maybe the Peter Rabbit ones or something like that but we we offer you know we we we try in our small way to to to help um when when there is numismatically relevant themes so if there's something that will crop up which obviously would clearly be a numismatic illogical you know illogical from a numismatic perspective that's where we'd chip in and we'd say you know this doesn't work or what do you mean that anniversary that's the anniversary of celebrating it actually isn't an anniversary the real anniversary is x so that's that's really our role it's providing that expertise and advice to help shape and inform really um yeah I I wish I could say I've got the power to say oh I really like that that's the one I want but it's much more of a you know a helping out role to be honest an advice role okay so we're not going to see your face on a coin anytime I don't think the public would want that I don't know don't know and so so out of all those um roles what what's what do you particularly enjoy what what aspects of your work do you think you enjoy the most I still enjoy the research I mean I I did history because I love the subject and you know I love researching and writing about the subject and even now you know all those years after doing the undergraduate it's still something I really enjoy and one of the things that really gives me a buzz is when I do get chance to go down to the national archives and research a new topic and I've been you know recently working on um uh studying uh the post-war sovereign story so why sovereign started coming to be struck again after the Second World War and getting down to Q and getting to grips with some of the contemporary documents down there and writing that up and and giving the talk to the uh British News Math exercises I did a couple of months ago on on on that that was brilliant and I still enjoy that I still love that excellent okay um and are there any um yeah presumably you you help with the exhibitions at the museum and um deliver talks that kind of thing are there any that that you've worked on that particularly sticking your memory any kind of stories or aspects of coins that really kind of struck struck you uh the exhibition side is is is I'm involved I'm involved as loosely in that there's my colleague Abigail Kevin who does this with a lot of the exhibitions work and um a really good one that we did that really never saw the light of day unfortunately was um on war and coinage that was um you know espionage and war and coinage which was due to run last year so it opened about two weeks before COVID did um and we put all this effort and time into it and then it was open for two weeks and nobody saw it because because the RME was closed for most of the time it was running um but that was a great exhibition and um and you know with regards to talks I've been very fortunate as to some of the places I've been able to give talks by being connected with Dementon um I really enjoyed a few years ago when I gave a talk at the VNA as part of the VNA lights program and we were there in the you know after hours and talking to these people as they were coming through for this part of their lights program in relation to the launch of the new one pound coin um a few years ago that was that was an excellent one and another personal highlight was uh uh after hours at Westminster Abbey there was no one else around there's just a small group of mint customers and I got to give a talk there and that was seeing the Abbey pretty much deserted was incredible yeah you know so you do get those perks as it were of the role um by being being here excellent sounds great okay so if moving on to the museum um what what do you think the museum offers to to coin collectors specifically if they come along or they come to your website we're currently trying to make ourselves more accessible and that's that's really sort of what we've been the road of the direction of travel that we've been working on over the last few years um because even as you know the museum itself has been around since 1816 but as a modern independent charity we've only been around for about 10-12 years now and what we're trying to do is scan more documents and put them online um so in the coming weeks we're not months weeks we will be putting online the digitised uh annual reports of the raw mint so from 1870 through to 1976 they'll all be available for people to look through fantastic resource um and searchable which is brilliant from our point of view as well from a research perspective uh so you can just put back about popping key terms and in line with that we're also working in the background have been for a little while now on putting the collection online so photographing the coins producing all the records and getting those online and it's an awful lot of work to go from you know nothing with thousands and thousands of coins to getting them all photographed to get all the collection work in order and those things are just starting to bear fruit after many many years of of effort but that said we still would encourage researchers to come and visit us you know get in touch if you want to come down we will do what we can to help you we can't always do we can't always touch on all the subjects because of the nature of the collection but certainly for the modern coinage you know from our point of 1660s onwards uh if people have research inquiries and research questions get in touch and if we've got things in the collection that you want to see we can arrange times for people to come in we're only just really starting to get back into the swing of that post-covid we'd yet to have proper researchers in yet but um it will be happening again so for all those listening and all those involved in research you know do do get in touch excellent okay and um down there you've got the royal mint experience haven't you and the museum are they kind of interlinked is that all what they are yeah it's it's it's a sort of it's like a long tale to explain but the the royal mint experiences is run by the royal mint and um where we are involved because the museum and the mint believe it or not are actually two separate entities you've got the mint plc that actually makes the coins and the money quite literally and the royal mint museum which is a separate charitable entity um think of us as almost as little and big brother really uh and that'll give you an idea so the royal mint experience is run by the royal mint but everything that's in the exhibition space is is provided by the royal mint museum so we we deal with the exhibition side of things in the exhibition area and we will update that and add to it so there's a there's a link through there in terms of us you know collaborating and working together um even though we don't run the royal mint experience directly but it has been fantastic for us as a museum because it gives us a showcase something we previously never had people that actually come and see what we've got in the collection even if it's just a small part of it at the moment so so has that you know dramatically changed I guess it's changed how many people know about the museum how many people see the items in there yeah it definitely has yeah it's it's in changed how we engage with the public as well because previously you're stuck behind two layers of barbed wire people can't get on to the site now you've got somewhere where the public can really come and you so prior to COVID anyway you get people asking questions and we could just wonder down literally next door to the royal mint experience we could wonder across and speak to people and talk to them and it's a two-way dynamic that's that is the great thing about inquiries is that sometimes the public will give you information that you don't know and you can give them information that they don't know so that's that's part of the reason why we do encourage people to get in touch because they can sometimes give us just as much as we can give them really in terms of information yeah yeah that's certainly strikes a chord with me you know and we've we've got a magazine and a website it's often the readers that are telling me what's what's what so yeah that's great and do you get a lot of inquiries from the public and what what kind of things do people ask is it the moment we're dealing with roughly about 100 150 inquiries a month so the public says we get quite a few and that can range you know it's as broad as the day is long it can range from the basics of I've found this coin what is it and you get a picture of you know some random coin through to much more nitty gritty detailed inquiries that require research one that springs to mind about I think it was a what's it now 1826 crown I think it was a frosted crown or something along the lines that was reputed to have been shown at the great exhibition in 1851 and they were asking can you provide any basis for this any information to back this up and admittedly we couldn't say hand and heart we could but we did we were able to go through with with the person in question what we did know about it and provide them with some information and that was required quite a bit of digging down in what we've got downstairs now library to to pull that out so it's a very very broad spectrum of inquiries from the detailed research to sometimes what is this coin and is this an error which is we do we do get quite a few of those admittedly is this an error coin most of them are not but there we are of course okay and in the collection itself at the museum am I right and saying there's hundreds of thousands of coins yeah I think we've certainly got well in excess of 100 000 coins and that's not including the tooling the plaster models electrotypes we've got a library downstairs which is very distinct numismatic library some very very old books from which came across from the sarasifier banks collection so I think the early earliest books we've got in there is a 17th century dutch merchants book so gives you an idea of the breadth of what we have here it's it's it's huge it's a vast vast collection and you've got some very big bits of kit old machinery that's been used in the mint and time so we've got quite a wide scope and people should certainly not think it's just coins because there's an awful lot else that goes into into what we've got in the collection yeah and I think a question that was touched on in your other video which I mentioned at the end was it's not just british coins it's not no that's a very good point I should have made myself it's it's whatever the mint has been doing so we are chart the royal mince activity we're primarily historians of the royal mint so we try and to tell that story and because the royal mint has produced overseas coinage for many many countries over its long history we have a vast overseas collection as well and that extends through to tooling as well and plaster models and artwork so if the mint has made it we leave we should be in a position to tell the story of that coinage but also help researchers with with what they might be doing to look into the subject matter yeah and does that mean you get many inquiries from people overseas yeah we quite regularly it's not as many as people obviously in britain but we still get a good supply of overseas inquiries coming in I don't think there's any recent ones that have notes but there's there's there's quite a few people that do get in touch it was a researcher relatively recently who was looking at at seals colonial seals because the mint has been involved with seal production on and off over its history and we've got a very good collection of seals so he was doing some research into colonial seals from the like it was the 17th and 18th century which we got some examples of so yet again it's it's a very broad spectrum of inquiries that we receive excellent okay and there's also VIP tours yes yeah you tell us a bit about those so those are um those are run through the romance experience but it will allow people to actually come into the museum building proper and so into the the back room the collection rooms it were where myself or one of my colleagues will give them a glimpse of the collection as it were we'll spend an hour with them in the in the collection and going through the story of the British coinage or the coinage more generally and we'll showcase what we have here the only thing I would say at the moment is we're not quite back to where we were pre-COVID getting people into the museum a small air conditioned room is not not great from COVID perspective but it certainly is the intention to get people back in in there and that is what will form part of the VIP experience in addition to that they go around site and it is it's a long day it's a lot of walking involved but it is it's you know it's a fascinating day you get to see behind the scenes of toolmaking and you know the commemorative coin production as well as circulating coin production you see an awful lot of the site and as it's a 34 acre site that explains why there's a lot of walking yeah so okay so um how to just just come back to that kind of international aspect and I guess the British empire how do you think the world kind of views British coinage and the royal mint the mint itself I think the mint today obviously faces a lot of challenges you know no one can no one can say that the circulating coinage hasn't declined I mean it's still obviously there there's still still is demand but it has dropped over the last 10 years certainly once I've been here um so there are challenges from that perspective but one of the things the mint has always constantly tried to do despite that is is to try and maintain quality of what it's producing in terms of design particularly uh and I think that does set us apart to a degree from some of the coinages overseas we've always tried to to to get high quality designs and that is certainly a role that the roman advisory committee has fulfilled over its you know nearly a century is trying to keep that standard high and it's the same with production is that we've always tried to maintain high standards um and that always isn't that isn't always easy when it comes to particularly circulating coin when you're facing you know facing increased pressures particularly for from an overseas market so I'd hope that there is a view um of the mint as for something that produces quality quality design and something that we we do try to keep as high as possible um despite all of the the pressures that that we face in in the modern world so that's hopefully something that the public and more generally the world would see and do you think just just historically do you think british coinage has kind of influenced other coins and other other mints I certainly in the in the more modern period and I think that that is more of a legacy to some degree of empire you can't have you can't write out of history what happened in the 19th and early 20th century with the empire it certainly you know for for good or bad influenced large parts of the world for a long long time and take for example the sovereign you know the modern sovereign when it was pre-eminent around the globe in the 19th century they couldn't have this sort of american express card of its day you could toddle off to whatever part of the globe and people would know that they could trade their sovereigns for goods and services um and that uh elements of it certainly you you see echoes of it when uh countries move away from um britain and you know you get the decolonization process countries developing their own gold coinages often initially in some sort of reference to the sovereign in one way or another just because of that sheer influence that it had uh and it being such a uh an important part of um uh the world's coinage uh that was you know from a from a personal perspective when I was doing the research about this the sovereign after this the the second world war it was something that that staggered me just its sheer hold even in the 1940s and 1950s that it had on certain areas of the world grease for example uh in the massive economic crisis it had after the second world war from 45 through to about 47 millions of sovereigns were being pumped in to grease by the british to prop up the greek economy yeah you're thinking it's it's crazy that this this british gold coin is effectively propping up the greek economy post second world war uh and it explains why there are still so many sovereigns in Greece even there um so there's that legacy um that that's still there and it's not so much the raw mint shaping that it's more of a question of british history if that makes sense shaping it and the mint being one of these great institutions of the british world which has played its part in the history of britain and more widely the world yeah yeah that's that's so interesting and um just going forward and do you what do you think the future holds for the royal min and perhaps um more so just coinage in general it's it's an interesting one it's it's it's hard to predict the future always is but i certainly think with from a circulating perspective as i mentioned that there are challenges out there i'd be lying if i said that people today are not using their cards more particularly with covid it's it's it's happened and certainly there are challenges from a circulating perspective and when we know that's the case that said people are still using coins the surveys done prior to uh covid did show that there was still strong demand for coinage use even though it had dropped and there is still a strong demand from a collector perspective for coins from a proof perspective there's there's an active market out there um so i certainly think from a from a commemorative point of view coins have and do play a role in commemorating important british events uh or events more generally um how the economy will shape up from respond to to covid and the world more generally is it's a tricky one to say um i still think that's far too early to uh to offer an opinion on that but um you don't want to you know abandoning coinage would be i think a mistake um just because there are still people who rely on it and it's still an important part of for for some people anyway a very very important part of their day-to-day activities so i'd like to think that it's it's still in the medium term certainly got a strong place in in uh in britain absolutely okay and just one final question chris um do you collect coins yourself i other than uh occasionally putting to the side uh 50 p's from my change not really and the reason for that is because of uh it would probably be a huge conflict of interest having such a vast the impressive coin collection uh which i go to work with and then try and compete with that at home um well i couldn't you know i there's no way on god's green earth i could ever have an ed with the eighth coin collection so um that is partly the reason why i don't have a coin collection it's that i already worked with such an amazing one um like i see daily uh i just could never ever you know match that in a million years no absolutely so is there a particular um period or type of coin that you kind of have a soft spot for within the collection um i i think it's probably more of a question of i'm trying to think now what would be i do always i do find the particularly fascinating period um is and i mentioned it earlier you know the the reign of charles the first or the common world cromwell and enter charles the second's period strictly speaking it's not our area of expertise as such because we claim expertise as a museum from the 1660s onwards in the introduction to screwpress that said we still have coins from that era and um i find those particularly fascinating and that's probably my history uh background coming out there and i i just i just think it's brilliant to look at some of the coinage from that period and see the the vast degree of changes that goes on um more generally and that that key change over from hammered coinage to machine coinage with the instruction to screwpress those are it's an interesting period and to see what happens there in that introduction of a modern coinage really so that's probably a weakness of mine when it comes to uh to talking to people about the collection i'd say yeah excellent okay well um we do have a coin of the day from the world mint museum on the website throughout the festival of coins so do have a look at that everyone and also um chris and his colleague david mason have um already answered some of your questions on a video we'll be putting that live on friday next friday um so you can have a look at that um there's some more questions and answers with them there so chris thanks so much for your time today really interesting and i'm good luck with the next 10 years at the museum thank you and also with the you know good luck with all the post-covid things and um i'm sure we'll keep an eye on the website but people can go to the museum now that's right isn't it the romance experiences deaf is open um people can visit and yet again if people have questions i'd encourage them to go to the the museum's website and ask those questions of us uh we're back in the museum now we you know we're trying as best we can to to answer people's questions as well as we can as quickly as we can so get in touch is the is the main thing and if you are in south wales come and visit the experience brilliant yeah i think i'm i'm going to come next time i'm in that area definitely sounds great so yeah thanks so much chris for your time and we'll speak soon pleasure thank you very much thanks chris don't miss the