The Mint

Thomas Rowlandson

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In the late 13th century the Royal Mint moved into the Tower of London and from this home produced most of Britain's coinage. Pugin and Rowlandson here show workers feeding metal blanks into presses that hold dies able to stamp beyween sixty and eighty coins a minute. In 1810, shortly after this print was made, a new Mint, equiped with steam-powered machinery, opened on Little Tower Hill just outside the fortress's walls.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art