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A Pretty Penny?

Britain Unveils Eccentric New Coinage

By Stefan Marx in London

Britain is getting new coinage in the first modernization of its money in half a century. The eccentric puzzle design is likely to confuse tourists and reaffirms the country's determination not to adopt the euro single currency any time soon.

Britannia has been adorning the British pound for more than 300 years. With her stoic gaze, majestic poise and Union Jack, she is the female figurehead of all things British. Yet the national personification of this proud island nation is about to disappear from the 50-pence coin.

The United Kingdom is introducing new coins this summer -- but traditionalists aren't as unhappy about the change as one might think. After all, the new money is a sign that the introduction of the euro is a distant prospect at best.

Normally Britain's coins undergo a redesign whenever a new monarch takes the throne. Admittedly new coins were introduced in 1971, but that was only because Britain decimalized the pound that year, getting rid of the centuries-old system of 12 pennies to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound. But even then, the old main motifs from the 1950s survived. Adjustments have been made since then with the introduction of the pound coin and smaller 50-pence and 5-pence pieces, for example.

Queen Elizabeth II has been on the throne for 56 years and no one would dare question the presence of her profile on the back of every British coin. But Prime Minister Gordon Brown decided three years ago, when he was finance minister, that it was time to at least modernize the front of the coin so that the muilti-cultural, progressive face of Britain be reflected in copper and nickel.

The Royal Mint launched an open competition and received some 4,000 designs including modern buildings, types of bird and even fish and chips. In the end, 26-year-old graphic designer Matthew Dent from Wales won the competition with a design that banishes Britannia and turns the coins into a puzzle that makes up the Shield of the Royal Arms.

The heraldric symbol has been split among six coin denominations from 1 pence to 50 pence, with the 1-pound coin displaying the shield in its entirety. "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," said Dent in a statement published on the Royal Mint Web site. He said he wants the design to entertain people and make them laugh.

Traditionalists Outraged

But the design has been controversial. The main element of the coins may be conventional, but Dent has broken a number of unwritten rules. A Welshman of all people has removed the dragon, the heraldric symbol of his own country, from Britain's coins. And the banishing of Britannia has proven especially unpopular. After all, she featured on the island's money as far back as the second century AD, when the Roman occupiers put her image on their coins.

King Charles II brought her back in the 17th century. She is the perfect personification of the British nation: proud, stiff and above reproach in public -- but uninhibited and saucy in private. After all, the model for the image of Britannia used on the coins was none other than Frances Teresa Stuart, the king's mistress.

Perhaps, however, the removal of the 50-pence concubine will only be temporary. Tabloid Mail on Sunday, mouthpiece of collective British national pride, is outraged at her absence from the new coinage. The paper dispatched a real life Britannia in full battle dress to the head of the Royal Mint's coin design commission, John Porteous. He invited the surprise visitor to tea and was browbeat into promising the Mail's readers that Britannia would soon be minted on a special two-pound coin.

And Virginia Ironside, daughter of the designer of the current coinage, Christopher Ironside, wrote in a column in the Independent newspaper: "I can see nothing at all in the new designs to like, and all I can hear is the creaking sound of my father turning in his grave."

"The designs are fresh, quirky, funny, eccentric -- but totally unworkable as actual coins," she goes on. "They're like the work of a landscape student doing a garden in the shape of a scarab beetle and expecting everyone to notice it on the ground."

No Numbers

Virginia Ironside has a point: each euro coin, for example, has big numbers minted on it to make its denomination easily visible. But Dent has completely done away with numbers. The value of each new British coin is minted on it in small letters. Playful design has scored a victory over no-nonsense ease of use.

In fact, the new pound virtually amounts to an anti-euro. Tourists visiting Britain from this summer onwards will be cursing the clever designer, especially if they aren't equipped with reading glasses. But maybe that is precisely the reason why all the criticism dissipated after just a week. While tourists will be angrily rummaging around their wallets, the British have a degree of reassurance that the introduction of the euro in the UK is a very long way off.

Indeed, Britain at present looks extremely unlikely to introduce the currency. UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown will whip the EU reform treaty through parliament, shrugging off calls for a referendum. But once the unpopular treaty has been passed, the issue of Europe will be finished for the Brown government. No further big EU projects will follow, the government has promised the opponents of the treaty.

In any case, adopting the euro would require a national referendum. And even in the best days of the pro-Europe former Prime Minister Tony Blair, support for the single currency never climbed much over 30 percent. And the conservative opposition is strictly euro-skeptic.

The Queen has given her blessing to the new coinage. Her portrait will be minted on the back. And the old coins will remain in circulation, probably until the day Britain finally does say yes to the euro. Before that happens, though, Britannia is more than likely to have retaken her rightful place on the face of Britain's coinage.